What its like to do CRISPR work at BioCurious
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Maria Chavez
May 28, 2020, 4:18:21 PM5/28/20
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Hi all,
I wanted to share a pre-print from our member Chris Hackley. “A Novel Set of Cas9 Fusion Proteins to stimulate Homologous Recombination: Cas9-HRs” (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.100677v1). This is a novel Cas9 fusion protein designed to increase HDR rates through bypassing the rate limiting step of homologous recombination repair. We asked Chris a bit about working on his cutting edge research at BioCurious.
How did working at BioCurious help or hinder this work?
BioCurious has been really helpful in allowing me to do this work independently and on a limited budget. The other members of BioCurious are terrific, and their advice and support has helped keep me engaged and motivated. It’s great having such smart people around to bounce ideas off of and also to hear about the interesting things they’re working on. In addition, BioCurious’ affordable membership fees made it financially viable for me to do this work as it was entirely self-funded and I couldn’t have afforded space at a traditional lab. Of course, there were also some drawbacks to pursuing this project at a community lab. For example, the equipment was limited and not top-of-the-line compared to what you would have in a well-funded academic or industry lab, which sometimes limited the types of experiments I was able to do. However, the equipment limitations actually helped me grow as a scientist as I was forced to think outside the box and work with the equipment available to design experiments to successfully test my various hypotheses. Ultimately, BioCurious provided me the with the space, equipment, and encouragement from other scientists that helped me develop a state-of-the-art genetic engineering platform. I think this really speaks to the key role that BioCurious and other community labs can play in scientific innovation.
Is there anything that is different in working at a community lab vs university?
There are a lot of differences compared to my prior experiences at universities. One thing I never had to deal with before was setting up accounts and dealing directly with vendors to get approved to buy reagents and supplies. As mentioned above, some of the equipment is a bit dated, but nonetheless was sufficient to develop my state-of-the-art genetic engineering platform. Another difference is the presence of people who aren’t professional scientists, like members of the community and high school students. Having a lot of beginner scientists around the lab led to the occasional “accident”, which was understandable but obviously not ideal. Overall though I appreciated the opportunity to work alongside non-professional scientists and found a lot of inspiration in getting to know so many people, young and old, who are passionate about science and learning.
What are your next steps?
Given the promising results my platform has generated so far, I plan to raise either angel or seed funding to finance further testing of Ribonucleoprotein (RNP) versions of the platform, as well explore how the reduced activation of the p53 pathway by the platform can be used to help increase genetic engineering success. I am also exploring partnerships and collaborations with both academic and industry partners. Finally, I am starting to look for core team members to help me build my technology into a full-blown company.
I wanted to share a pre-print from our member Chris Hackley. “A Novel Set of Cas9 Fusion Proteins to stimulate Homologous Recombination: Cas9-HRs” (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.100677v1). This is a novel Cas9 fusion protein designed to increase HDR rates through bypassing the rate limiting step of homologous recombination repair. We asked Chris a bit about working on his cutting edge research at BioCurious.
How did working at BioCurious help or hinder this work?
BioCurious has been really helpful in allowing me to do this work independently and on a limited budget. The other members of BioCurious are terrific, and their advice and support has helped keep me engaged and motivated. It’s great having such smart people around to bounce ideas off of and also to hear about the interesting things they’re working on. In addition, BioCurious’ affordable membership fees made it financially viable for me to do this work as it was entirely self-funded and I couldn’t have afforded space at a traditional lab. Of course, there were also some drawbacks to pursuing this project at a community lab. For example, the equipment was limited and not top-of-the-line compared to what you would have in a well-funded academic or industry lab, which sometimes limited the types of experiments I was able to do. However, the equipment limitations actually helped me grow as a scientist as I was forced to think outside the box and work with the equipment available to design experiments to successfully test my various hypotheses. Ultimately, BioCurious provided me the with the space, equipment, and encouragement from other scientists that helped me develop a state-of-the-art genetic engineering platform. I think this really speaks to the key role that BioCurious and other community labs can play in scientific innovation.
Is there anything that is different in working at a community lab vs university?
There are a lot of differences compared to my prior experiences at universities. One thing I never had to deal with before was setting up accounts and dealing directly with vendors to get approved to buy reagents and supplies. As mentioned above, some of the equipment is a bit dated, but nonetheless was sufficient to develop my state-of-the-art genetic engineering platform. Another difference is the presence of people who aren’t professional scientists, like members of the community and high school students. Having a lot of beginner scientists around the lab led to the occasional “accident”, which was understandable but obviously not ideal. Overall though I appreciated the opportunity to work alongside non-professional scientists and found a lot of inspiration in getting to know so many people, young and old, who are passionate about science and learning.
What are your next steps?
Given the promising results my platform has generated so far, I plan to raise either angel or seed funding to finance further testing of Ribonucleoprotein (RNP) versions of the platform, as well explore how the reduced activation of the p53 pathway by the platform can be used to help increase genetic engineering success. I am also exploring partnerships and collaborations with both academic and industry partners. Finally, I am starting to look for core team members to help me build my technology into a full-blown company.
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We look forward to getting folks back in the lab this summer but appreciate the way some of our members have used this time to publish their work.
Take care all,
Maria
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