Abstract 

Dr. Jones leads one of six inaugural research groups at the EMBL Partnership Institute for Genome Editing Technologies at Vilnius University's Life Sciences Center. His work centers on understanding how CRISPR nucleases identify and discriminate DNA targets that match their programming, from all other DNAs that do not, so-called off-targets. Off-targets cause unexpected and sometimes dangerous outcomes during gene editing. In this seminar, Dr. Jones will share how engineered and natural CRISPR nucleases, like Cas9 and Cas12a, bind and cleave targets and off-targets, and how we can use this data to make gene editing safer and more successful. His team's high-throughput strategies combine high-throughput DNA synthesis and sequencing with classical biochemistry to benchmark CRISPR nucleases, show how best to select and program them, and identify new goals for discovering and engineering CRISPR nucleases for gene editing.