4:00 PM
5:00 PM
Biochemist and Nobel Prize-winning co-inventor of CRISPR technology, Jennifer Doudna will present a talk titled "A decade of CRISPER: What's ahead for genome editing" for the fall 2023 Science Achievement Graduate Fellows Lecture.
Lecture Abstract
Biochemist and Nobel Prize-winning co-inventor of CRISPR technology Jennifer Doudna will present the fall 2023 Science Achievement Graduate Fellows (SAGF) Lecture on Monday, October 23, at 4 p.m. This free online public lecture, titled “A decade of CRISPER: What's ahead for genome editing,” is sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science with funds from the Russell E. Marker Lecture endowment.
Fundamental research to understand how bacteria fight viral infections uncovered the function of CRISPR-Cas programmable proteins that detect and cut specific DNA or RNA sequences. Doudna will describe their research showing how CRISPR-Cas9, an RNA-guided protein, is the foundation of widely accessible technology for genome editing. Current research focuses on exploring the biochemical basis for genome editing and developing effective applications in medicine and agriculture. Recent results show how CRISPR-Cas9 “reads” the genome to find target sequences quickly and accurately. These findings are the foundation of strategies to use CRISPR-based genome editing in new ways, including to study the biology of microbial communities such as the human gut microbiome.
About the Speaker
Jennifer Doudna, PhD is a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9 — a genome engineering technology that allows researchers to edit DNA — with collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier earned the two the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and forever changed the course of human and agricultural genomics research. She is also the Founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute, the Li Ka Shing chancellor’s chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences, and a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Gladstone Institutes, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a leader in the global public debate on the responsible use of CRISPR and has co-founded and serves on the advisory panel of several companies that use the technology in unique ways. Doudna is the co-author of “A Crack in Creation,” a personal account of her research and the societal and thical implications of gene editing. Learn more at innovativegenomics.org/jennifer-doudna.
About the SAGF Lectures
The Science Achievement Graduate Fellows (SAGF) Lectures feature distinguished speakers in science and mathematics and are an outreach of the SAGF scholarship program in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State.
Established in 2018, the SAGF scholarships are awarded annually to outstanding graduate students seeking a doctoral degree in each of the college's seven departments and who are interested in the advancement of women and gender-diverse individuals in the sciences and related fields. The SAGF scholarships recognize women and gender-diverse individuals — both underrepresented groups in the sciences and mathematics—who have a record of significant professional achievements in their field and who are role models for the students in the college. Each scholarship is named in honor of an outstanding woman scientist or mathematician who not only made groundbreaking discoveries but also blazed the trail for others who have followed in their footsteps. The program Fellows host two distinguished lectures a year to honor the women scientists for whom the scholarships are named.