Conference Speakers

Exploring and harnessing the functional diversity of CRISPR-Cas12a2 nucleases

Prof. Chase Beisel is a full professor in the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research based on Würzburg, Germany, where he heads the RNA Synthetic Biology department. Chase is originally from the US, where he received his BS (Iowa State University) and PhD (California Institute of Technology) both in chemical engineering. After completing his PhD thesis work with Christina Smolke at Caltech and then postdoctoral training with Gisela Storz at the National Institutes of Health, he launched his independent research group as a faculty member of the chemical & biomolecular engineering department at North Carolina State University. After receiving tenure and being promoted to associate professor, he transitioned to the HIRI shortly after its launch. His research group works at the interface of CRISPR biology and technologies, with the aim of translating discoveries into new and improved approaches to study, diagnose and treate infectious disease.

Evolution of immunity across domains of life

Aude Bernheim is a microbiologist interested in how bacteria fight off their viruses. She obtained her PhD from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France studying the evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems and led her post-doctoral research in the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israël focusing on the discovery of novel prokaryotic immune systems. She currently leads a lab at the Pasteur Institute in France exploring the conservation of immunity across domains of life. She's also an activist for a more inclusive and diverse science (both for people and the science itself).

Anti-phage defenses in staphylococci

Asma Hatoum-Aslan is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Helen Corley Petit Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the American University of Beirut, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University, and postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Bacteriology. Her research investigates the molecular interactions between bacteria and their viruses (i.e. phages), with a focus on CRISPR-Cas and other bacterial immune systems, as well as the mechanisms that phages have evolved to counter them. She has received several honors, including an NIH K22 Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and was named a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases.

Elizabeth Kellogg did her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and received a PhD from the University of Washington, working on computational biology in the group of David Baker. She then became a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eva Nogales at UC Berkeley using cryo-electron microscopy. Her scientific background results in a scientific approach that seeks to understand biology with a quantitative perspective, relying on biological structure determination and design. Since starting her own group at Cornell University in 2019, Dr. Kellogg has sought to understand how transposons reshape genomes and how they can be repurposed as genome-editing tools. In particular, her group has investigated the behavior and molecular mechanisms of programmable, CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs), to determine how DNA integration is regulated spatially and temporally in a genomic context, using a combination of biochemical, structural, single-molecule and genetic approaches. Among other honors, Dr. Kellogg was selected as Pew Biomedical Scholar in 2021 and received the 2023 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society. She joined St. Jude as an Associate Member in 2023.

Multilayered CRISPR Defense and Anti-CRISPR Counteraction

Ming Li is a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his undergraduate studies at Shandong University and obtained a PhD from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He currently leads a lab focusing on the diverse microbial defense systems, including but not limited to CRISPR-Cas, toxin-antitoxin (TA), and exploring their potential applications in biotechnology. Li’s group has uncovered the CRISPR-regulated toxin-antitoxin (CreTA), which was classified as a new type VIII TA, and investigated its widespread presence in type I and V-A systems, showcasing its critical role in protecting CRISPR-Cas against a wide range of anti-CRISPRs elements/mechanisms. Li’s lab also attempts to AssociaTe TA and CRISPR-Cas to Kill (ATTACK) multidrug-resistant pathogens.

RNA and Gene-editing

Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University.
Talk Title: RNA Word and Gene Editing Research Interests:
The Liu lab uses multidisciplinary approaches to study the following topics:
（1） Design and development of new gene-editing tools
（2） Mechanism study about RNA-involved nuclease machinery
Major research achievements: Gogo Liu’s group has long utilized multidisciplinary approaches to explore and develop RNA functional elements with nucleic acid manipulation capabilities, as well as related molecular machines, successfully establishing several sets of novel gene editing systems. In terms of using RNA as a guiding element for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has identified and developed nucleic acid nuclease systems such as CRISPR-Casπ that use large guide RNAs, and proposed the hypothesis that the CRISPR-Cas system may have originated from RNA ribozymes; in terms of using RNA as a regulatory element for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has revealed the supervisory role of structural RNA molecules in the precise transposition of retrotransposons, and developed a retrotransposon-based tool for large fragment gene insertion; in terms of using RNA as the executor for gene editing: Gogo Liu’s group has identified and developed the HYER ribozyme that can cut DNA via hydrolysis, contributing to a new generation of gene editing platform independent of proteins.

Dr. Audrone Lapinaite is an assistant professor at the Center for Translational Vision Research and the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of natural and synthetic DNA and RNA modifying enzymes, and advancing precision genome editing tools to treat genetic ocular diseases.

She completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees in biochemistry at Vilnius University (Lithuania), where she was working with Prof. Saulius Klimasauskas and Dr. Grazvydas Lukinavicius on the engineering of bacterial DNA methyltransferase to site-specifically tag genomic DNA.

Dr. Lapinaite received her PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg (Germany), where she was working with Prof. Teresa Carlomagno on the structural and biochemical characterization of the box C/D RNA-protein complex (ribosomal RNA methyltransferase) using a combination of high-resolution (solution state NMR) and low-resolution (small angle neutron/X-ray scattering) approaches.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, in the labs of Jennifer Doudna and Jamie Cate, she conducted research on the biochemical and structural characterization (using cryo-EM) of CRISPR-associated programmable RNA and DNA modifying enzymes.

Before joining UC Irvine, Dr. Lapinaite established her research group at Arizona State University in 2020. Her contributions to science have been recognized with a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) postdoctoral fellowship in 2015 and an NIH New Innovator Award in 2022.

In vivo CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing of KLKB1 in patients with hereditary angioedema (C1 inhibitor deficiency)

Honorary. Associate Professor Hilary Longhurst
Senior Medical Officer in Immunology at Te Toka Tumai | Auckland City Hospital & Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Assoc. Prof Hilary Longhurst qualified in medicine from Cambridge University and Imperial College, London. She developed her interest in Immunology during her PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research (now the Crick Institute) studying malaria histones. She worked as a Clinical and Laboratory Immunologist in London for many years, before relocating to New Zealand in 2020.

Hilary has been instrumental in developing patient-centred services for those with primary immune deficiency and hereditary angioedema due to C1 inhibitor (HAE) deficiency and serves on international HAE guideline committees. HAE is a monogenetic disorder with high penetrance, known pathogenesis and a proactive international patient/physician organisation. This has made HAE an attractive disorder for new drug development, initially with small molecules and monoclonal antibodies but more recently with RNA silencing techniques and gene editing. Hilary has been a pioneer in developing and enabling access to the new HAE therapies, which have transformed the lives of people with this disabling disorder. She was a founding medical advisor with HAE UK, UKPIPS (supporting antibody deficient patients) and DCAction (supporting families affected by telomere biology disorders) and serves on the steering committee for many HAE-related educational and academic events. She received the Milton Gold Memorial Lectureship Award from the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in 2020. She became an honorary life member of the Hereditary Angioedema Society of India, with establishment of the Hilary Longhurst annual lecture in 2021. Hilary has published over 150 papers in the field of angioedema and immune deficiency.

Translation-dependent downregulation of Cas12a mRNA by an anti-CRISPR protein

Nicole is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Rice University in Houston, Texas with dual majors in Biochemistry & Cell Biology and Classical Studies. She completed her graduate thesis in John Boothroyd’s lab at Stanford University, where she exploredToxoplasma gondii cell biology and pathogenesis. Her fascination with the molecular arms race led her to explore Cas12a anti-CRISPRs in Joseph Bondy-Denomy’s lab at the University of California, San Francisco. Her lab currently explores molecular antagonism between bacteria and phage and their applications. Outside of lab, Nicole enjoys tango dancing, cooking, live music, and comedy shows.

Temperate phages facilitate CRISPR-Cas immunizations through diverse mechanisms

Joshua Modell is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his Bachelor of Sciences from Duke University and worked with Dr. David McClay and Dr. Cynthia Bradham on the development of sea urchin embryos. He was then a technician for two years at the Broad Institute and worked on the Connectivity Map project under Dr. Todd Golub and Dr. Justin Lamb. Joshua next received his Ph.D. from MIT where he studied the cell cycle of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus in the lab of Dr. Michael Laub. As a postdoc at Rockefeller University in the lab of Dr. Luciano Marraffini, Joshua became fascinated with memory formation in CRISPR-Cas9, and in 2018, he opened his own lab at Johns Hopkins where he continues to study strategies of anti-phage defense.

Pulling the Plug on Bacteriophage Infection: The Pore Behavior of Membrane Proteins that Reside Within RNA-Targeting CRISPR-Cas and other Antiphage Defense Systems

Mitchell O’Connell is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at University of Rochester and a member of the Center for RNA Biology. He received his Bachelor of Sciences (Advanced) in at the University of Sydney with a double major in Biochemistry and Pharmacology. Mitchell then obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Prof. Joel Mackay, where he studied RNA-binding zinc fingers and used combinatorial techniques to design artificial zinc fingers with new RNA-binding specificities. After completing his PhD, Mitchell was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley, where he made a number of discoveries related to the ability for CRISPR-Cas systems to target RNA. In 2017, he moved to the University of Rochester and set his own lab, which focuses on understanding the biochemical mechanisms of RNA-mediated gene regulation, the development of new CRISPR-based tools to study these processes, and more recently understanding the role of membrane proteins that reside within CRISPR-Cas and other putative immune systems in anti-phage defense.

An R-loop-dependent RNase: structural basis for the inhibition of Cas9 by AcrIIA5

Yanli Wang is a professor in Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a HHMI International Research Scholar. Prof. Wang has completed her PhD from University of Science and Technology of China and postdoctoral studies from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Prof. Wang's group interests in understanding how RNA or DNA mediates prokaryotic defense against invasion by foreign nucleic acids. The main focus of her work is to systematically demonstrate the arms races between prokaryotes and phages, such as the CRISPR-Cas systems.

CRISPRs, anti-CRISPR, and ATP-driven sensors that trigger translational arrest

Dr. Blake Wiedenheft is a professor in the department of microbiology and cell biology at Montana State University. His career has been dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that viruses use to manipulate their hosts and the counter defense systems that microbes employ to defend themselves from infection. As a pre-doctoral student, his work involved cultivation, isolation, and molecular analysis of viruses that infect hyperthermophilic archaea. During his postdoctoral training in Jennifer Doudna’s lab at UC-Berkeley, he helped establish the role of CRISPRs in antiviral defense. In the summer of 2012, Dr. Wiedenheft returned “home” to join the faculty at Montana State University (MSU). Today, Dr. Wiedenheft leads a diverse research team focused on understanding the structural and functional basis of immune systems in bacteria.

Exploration of Biological Diversity

Dr. Zhang is a molecular biologist focused on improving human health. Current research in the Zhang laboratory is centered on discovering and characterizing novel biological systems and developing them into molecular tools and therapies to study and treat human disease. Zhang is a core member of the Broad Institute, an Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator.