Difference between revisions of "Team:Waterloo"

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                 <font color="orangetext">Swappable sgRNA Targets</font> |  
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                 <font color="#fbb67a">Swappable sgRNA Targets</font> |  
                 <font color="bluetext">Engineered PAM Flexibility</font> |  
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                 <font color="#79bcc7">Engineered PAM Flexibility</font> |  
                 <font color="greentext">Antiviral Protection for Plants</font>
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Revision as of 01:33, 15 September 2015

Swappable sgRNA Targets | Engineered PAM Flexibility | Antiviral Protection for Plants

Waterloo iGEM CRISPieR Logo

Re-engineering CRISPR-Cas9 with functional applications in eukaryotic systems

CRISPR-Cas9 is an exciting tool for synthetic biologists because it can target and edit genomes with unprecedented specificity. Our team is attempting to re-engineer CRISPR to make it more flexible and easier to use.

We’re making it easy to test different sgRNA designs: restriction sites added to the sgRNA backbone allow 20 nucleotide target sequences to be swapped without excessive cloning.

Additionally, we’re applying recent research on viable mutations within Cas9’s PAM-interacting domain to design (d)Cas9 variants that bind to novel PAM sites, moving towards the goal of a suite of variants that can bind any desired sequence. We believe our re-engineered CRISPR-Cas9 will give biologists increased ability to optimize targeting in many applications.

The application we chose to explore is a proof-of-concept antiviral system defending the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana against Cauliflower Mosaic Virus, which would benefit from testing a large number of possible sgRNAs in the viral genome.

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