This week, I sat down with Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg, the co-PIs who helped pioneer the field of genome engineering, and are now leading one of the most innovative and productive bioengineering labs in the world.
Omar and Jonathan met as graduate students in the lab of CRISPR pioneer, Feng Zhang. They have since co-authored more than 30 breakthrough papers that helped transform CRISPR-Cas from a basic research tool into a clinically relevant therapeutic and diagnostic modality. Their work has led to the founding of companies like Sherlock Biosciences, Proof Diagnostics, and Tome Biosciences.
Their mission is to make biology programmable, and here’s the progress they have already made towards that goal:
EvolvePro: To compress months of directed evolution into weeks by combining protein language models with experimental iteration
STITCHR: For scarless and efficient DNA insertions ranging from a single base to 12.7 kb
PRECISE: For writing RNA of arbitrary length and sequence into existing pre-mRNAs
Virtual Cell: To model cell states and perturbations to predict or control cellular behavior
Secretome Project: To systematically test human secreted peptides for desirable therapeutic phenotypes, like muscle gain and organ rejuvenation.
And in case you’re short on time, here’s a quick teaser:
Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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