CRISPR/Cas9

Researching this technique and developing the write-up and presentation was not as straight-forward as I expected. Many reviews were either too implicit or too superficial (intended for people with pracically no prior knowledge of the technique). The implicit ones raised only more questions, while the superficial ones didn’t answer them with any detail.

Until the very last, while finishing the powerpoint, we continued to discover details that were either unclear or that we had understood differently.

We had a very classic group-work experience along the way: four of us had met up and written a good deal of the write-up. We all thought it was well-phrased, precise and easy to read. Our last group member read it afterwards and turned out to be of a different opinion, and provided a ton of corrections, notes and suggestions – all in good meaning! But it felt like a bit of a setback that almost everything needed to be changed after hours of work.

Looking back now, I see that our write-up is much better after those corrections. Working on something together for many hours can make you “blind”, as you are so familiar with the thoughts behind the words, that you don’t realize it is not easy to understand.

I can’t think of a specific learning goal that I achieved with this assignment, but I definitely learned a couple of valuable lessons:

• You need fresh eyes to optimize your work
• Work isn’t personal, so don’t take it that way when people criticize it

And the more science-related lessons:

• CRISPR/Cas9 is applicable for many other things than gene editing
• I learned what the function of the PAM is! I was familiar with the technique before, but was never able to understand the purpose of the PAM.

All in all I am very satisfied with the outcome of this assignment.

Below is attached the write-up and the powerpoint slides:

Write-up: Summary Report

Pdf of owerpoint slides: CRISPR/Cas9 powerpoint