Some thoughts on engineering with CRISPR

The first time I heard about CRISPR was Fall 2014 in 7.012 during one of Eric Lander’s lectures.  He said something about how it was going to revolutionize genetic engineering, which, in retrospect, was my first wakeup call to what was happening in the field.

I didn’t realize to what extent that was true until after ~2 years of reading endless new studies and articles about how much potential this technology has.  Well, that and hearing all the terrible (and great) CRISPR jokes from every single biology professor I have had so far at MIT.  It has gotten to the point that I was sitting in next house dining a few weeks ago and I overheard someone at an adjacent table say something like “oh the fries are crisper today than normal” and it took me a solid half minute to realize that they weren’t trying to make a reference to CRISPR.  It turns out there’s this other word, ‘crisper,’ which means ‘even more crisp than an already crisp thing.’  Whoops.  I told this to a course six friend and they gave me a look as if to say ‘jeez, how far down the rabbit hole have you fallen?’  Pretty far, I’d say.  And if you listen pop sci, we’re not far off from a wonderland full of genetically engineered babies.  In reality, we’re probably not, but this didn’t temper my excitement when it turned out we were going to get to use CRISPR for mod 2!  I was ready to dive right in.  *Cue heavy-handed Corgi gif*

I really appreciated the journal club assignment, particularly because my paper dealt a lot with how CRISPR actually targets and interacts with the target DNA, which is something I had very little understanding of.  As usual, public speaking was fraught with me mumbling ends of sentences and tripping over my words, but I got through it, and, anyway, slip ups are all part of the learning process.

Most exciting was getting to see results for the ethanol assay with our ldhA targeting CRISPRi system.  And seeing that it actually worked!  Yay!  It was really exciting to get to see this technology in action, and to get to design the system ourselves.  Reading and just being immersed in CRISPR research helped me to better understand exactly how powerful the CRISPR approach is.  What better way to understand something than by testing it for yourself?

Lastly, I’d like to give a huge shout out to the teaching faculty!  You guys are amazing and make lectures and labs run so smoothly, I don’t know how you do it.  Thank you, also, for being wonderfully kind and understanding and answering all of my random questions with enthusiasm.  And thank you for the foods during journal club and the five hours I spent in office hours trying to analyze data for the research article.  This hungry, stressed course twenty student appreciates the gesture.

I am very tired now, after a long week of writing reports and taking tests (and looking for corgi gifs, as it turns out), so I am going to go sleep now, and will see you all this Tuesday!