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24
th
Biotechnology Congress: Research & Innovations
CRISPR Cas9 Technology and Genetic Engineering
Annual Congress on
October 24-25, 2018 | Boston, USA
Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials | ISSN: 2155-952X | Volume: 8
CRISPRseek and GUIDE-seq for design of target-specific guide RNAs in CRISPR-Cas9 genome-
editing systems
Lihua Julie Zhu
University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA
T
he most recently developed genome editing system, CRISPR-Cas9 has greater inherent flexibility than prior programmable
nuclease platforms. Because of its simplicity and efficacy, this technology is revolutionizing biological studies and holds
tremendous promise for therapeutic applications. However, imperfect cleavage specificity of CRISPR-Cas9 nuclease within the
genome is a cause for concern for its therapeutic application. To facilitate the adoption and improvement of this technology,
we have developed CRISPRseek for designing target-specific gRNAs, and GUIDE-seq for identifying genome-wide off-target
sites from GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq experiments to assess the precision of engineered CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases. In this
talk, I will give an introduction to the CRISPR genome editing, GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq technologies, followed by an
overview of the functionalities of CRISPRseek and GUIDE-seq. By the end of the talk, the participants should be able to design
target-specific gRNAs for various cas9 nucleases and genomes using CRISPRseek and analyze GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq
data using GUIDE-seq.
Biography
Lihua Julie Zhu is a research professor and the head of Bioinformatics Core in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology at University of Massachusetts
Medical School. Prior to joining UMASS, she served as the Director of Bioinformatics Consulting Core and the Director of Clinical Informatics Group of the Robert
H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center (RHLCCC) at Northwestern University. Her work is devoted to the understanding of gene regulation and cancer biology,
biomarker discovery, and development and application of genome editing technology. Her expertise is algorithms and computational tool development. Her group
is an active contributor to the open-source open-development Bioconductor project. They have developed a dozen packages with various utilities, ranging from
gRNA design, machine learning, peak calling, annotation, data integration to visualization. Among them, two packages are for designing and evaluating gRNAs for
the genome editing technology using engineered CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases: CRISPRseek is for designing target-specific and efficient gRNAs, and GUIDE-seq is
for evaluating the specificity of gRNAs using GUIDE-seq and CIRCLE-seq technologies. Among her 76 publications
Julie.zhu@umassmed.eduLihua Julie Zhu, J Biotechnol Biomater 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2155-952X-C4-097