Sixth year MD-PhD student Claire Kenney has been given an F31 Diversity Award from the NIH to support her research. Claire is currently a PhD student in the Marraffini Lab at The Rockefeller University where she is researching the mechanisms by which regulatory DNA sequences and proteins are used by the CRISPR-Cas system of Streptococcus pyogenes to protect it from invading viruses.
Ms. Kenney gives a summary of her research:
While the type II-A CRISPR-Cas system of Streptococcus pyogenes is best known for its genome editing applications, it functions as an adaptive immune system in bacteria, in which the cell acquires short foreign DNA sequences of viral origin, incorporates them into the CRISPR locus, and uses them to recognize and degrade the same infectious viruses. My research investigates, 1) the sequence-specificity of the foreign DNA sequences recognized by the CRISPR-Cas system and, 2) the mechanisms by which a fundamental yet poorly understood Cas protein, Csn2, helps incorporate foreign DNA into the CRISPR locus. The results of this work will expand knowledge of the archetypal type II-A CRISPR-Cas system, facilitating further advancement of revolutionary CRISPR-Cas-based medical therapies, from improved precision in gene editing, to tracking cellular “memories,” to the development of novel antimicrobial phage treatment strategies.
Claire Kenney