CBE Seminar - Chase Beisel

Chase Beisel

Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
North Carolina State University

The CRISPR Revolution

Abstract

Biotechnology, agriculture, and medicine are undergoing a radical revolution with the advent of CRISPR technologies. These technologies rely on programmable enzymes that are directed by engineered RNAs to bind and cleave matching DNA sequences. This capability in turn has had a profound impact on our ability to edit the genomes of organisms from bacteria through plants and animals, to turn genes on and off, to kill bacterial pathogens, and more. There is also tremendous excitement about the potential of these technologies for the treatment of human genetic disorders and diseases. This talk will focus on how these technologies emerged from adaptive immune elements called CRISPR-Cas systems that are found in most prokaryotes, and on how the rich diversity of these naturally-occurring systems can be harnessed to understand, engineer, and selectively kill bacteria. 

Bio

Dr. Beisel received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State University (2004) and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (2009) under the direction of Dr. Christina Smolke. He was awarded graduate fellowships through the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Program as well as a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowship through the Life Sciences Research Foundation. Following his two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health under the direction of Dr. Gisela Storz, Dr. Beisel joined the faculty in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. Dr. Beisel's current research focuses on understanding and engineering of gut microbes with the long-term goal of developing personalized probiotics. CRISPR-Cas systems are critical tools in his work.