Waiting List For:  IMAGinING THE FUTURE Seminar - October 9, 2019

MIPS new seminar series, IMAGinING THE FUTURE, is aimed at catalyzing interdisciplinary discussions in all areas of medicine and disease.

This seminar series is open and free to everyone in the Stanford community, as well as anyone from the surrounding community, universities, companies, or institutions.


"World of CRISPR: Editing Genomes and Altering Our Future"

Jennifer Doudna, PhD
Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, &
Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Professor in Biomedical and Health
University of California, Berkeley

Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Li Ka Shing Center, Berg Hall
1:00pm - 2:00pm Seminar & Discussion
2:00pm - 2:30pm Reception & Light Refreshments


ABSTRACT
Gene editing with CRISPR technology is transforming biology. Understanding the underlying chemical mechanisms of RNA-guided DNA and RNA cleavage provides a foundation for both conceptual advances and technology development. I will discuss how bacterial CRISPR adaptive immune systems inspire creation of powerful genome editing tools, enabling advances in both fundamental biology and applications in medicine. I will also discuss the ethical challenges of some of these applications with a focus on what our decisions now might mean for future generations.

ABOUT DR. JENNIFER DOUDNA
As an internationally renowned professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C. Berkeley, Doudna and her colleagues rocked the research world in 2012 by describing a simple way of editing the DNA of any organism using an RNA-guided protein found in bacteria. This technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, has opened the floodgates of possibility for human and non-human applications of gene editing, including assisting researchers in the fight against HIV, sickle cell disease and muscular dystrophy. Doudna is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, and has received many other honors including the Kavli Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Heineken Prize, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and the Japan Prize. She is the co-author with Sam Sternberg of “A Crack in Creation”, a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing.