What is CRISPR-Cas9 and how does it work? How do we edit genes? Jennifer Doudna, biochemist at UC Berkeley, explains.
The gene editing technique, created by UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleague, Emmanuelle Charpentier, director of the Max Planck Institute of Infection Biology in Berlin, has taken the research and clinical communities by storm as an easy and cheap way to make precise changes in DNA in order to disable genes, correct genetic disorders or insert mutated genes into animals to create models of human disease.
CRISPR-Cas9 is a hybrid of protein and RNA – the cousin to DNA – that functions as an efficient search-and-snip system in bacteria. It arose as a way to recognize and kill viruses, but Doudna and Charpentier realized that it could also work well in other cells, including humans, to facilitate genome editing. The Cas9 protein, obtained from the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes, functions together with a “guide” RNA that targets a complementary 20-nucleotide stretch of DNA. Once the RNA identifies a sequence matching these nucleotides, Cas9 cuts the double-stranded DNA helix.
Read more about CRISPR: http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/11/12/crispr-cas9-gene-editing-check-three-times-cut-once/
Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally
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Recent revelations about the massive scale of the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic surveillance programs and the use of drones by law enforcement agencies have raised the alarm about the vulnerability of civil liberties in the United States and damaged our reputation abroad. This panel will discuss surveillance and privacy and the U.S. National Security State. What is at issue concerning the use of drones, for surveillance and killing, abroad? What is the range of eavesdropping technologies used by the NSA at home? How should concerned citizens respond to these developments?
Christopher Kutz is Professor of Law at the Berkeley Law School where he is director of the Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs.
David A. Sklansky is also Professor of Law at the Berkeley Law School where he joined the faculty in 2005 following a decade at UCLA School of Law.
PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence - Fall 2006. An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense.