CRISPR_Cas9 Writeup – Prepared by Campbell Drohan, Denny Gombalová, Leon Lai, Carl-Johan Claudi Risom, and Ida Vinggaard Kjeldsen
Naturally-ocurring and engineered CRISPR/Cas9 systems. via Sander & Joung (2014). Nature Biotechnology. doi:10.1038/nbt.2842
Reflection
The questions I investigated in this assignment were:
- What general biological, chemical, and/or physical principles and concepts is this technique based on?
- What does this technique “do”?”
I had previously been somewhat familiar with CRISPR, having studied it briefly in MEDG 420 last year. In that course, we learned about gene therapy and gene editing technologies, gaining a surface-level understanding of the technology and its capabilities. This assignment, however, required me to know the in-depth mechanisms through which CRISPR functions, and allowed me to delve much deeper into the technique than I had done previously. The fact that I would be presenting this technique to my peers and would be expected to answer questions made me reflect on the components of the technique that I was a little confused about.
Over the course of this assignment I was able to learn about some new applications of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology. For instance, I was not previously aware that one could use an inactive Cas9 enzyme to target specific genes and add a marker, such as GFP or a radioactive marker. I always find it amazing how the scientific community can take a technique and tweak it so tat it can serve a with variety of purposes. This project has made me think about CRISPR-Cas9 beyond the classic “gene-editing” or knockout applications. I chose to showcase this assignment because it demonstrates my ability to work collaboratively with my peers, to share information in an engaging and accessible way, and to delve deeper into my own existing knowledge of scientific concepts.
This assignment demonstrates that I was able to achieve the following learning objectives:
- Assess your own level of knowledge in a field/area of interest and identify “gaps” in your knowledge or skills
- Integrate new factual and conceptual information into your models/thoughts/ideas
- Search the literature and effectively extract relevant information from it
- Communicate information, ideas, and findings clearly