NOTE: The Center for BioMolecular Modeling is now an independent organization, separate from MSOE. Please visit www.centerforbiomolecularmodeling.org for information.

The MSOE Center for BioMolecular Modeling (CBM) presented a four-day workshop entitled The Science and Ethics of Genome Editing at University of California, Berkeley. There were 24 high school and college science teachers from all across the U.S. that attended this workshop which was sponsored by the CBM’s NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA). 

These same teachers participated last summer in Part I of this two-year professional development experience at MSOE. In Part I of this experience, the teachers were introduced to CRISPR biology – how this CRISPR system acts as an adaptive immune system in bacteria.

In Part II of this experience, the workshop was hosted by the Innovative Genomics Institute on the UC Berkeley campus where Jennifer Doudna’s research group is developing CRISPR tools for genome editing. A major highlight of this summer’s workshop was the opportunity to meet with young researchers from this group who described their current research projects and their unique career paths.

The CBM is entering its third year of this five-year SEPA award. In the summer of 2020, the second cohort of teachers will travel to Boston for their Part II experience where they will interact with researchers from Feng Zhang’s laboratory at the Broad Institute. Dr. Zhang’s group is also adapting CRIPSR proteins to be more useful tools in diagnostics applications and genome editing.