Prof. Ailong Ke, molecular biology and genetics, discovers the relationship between a family of proteases caspases and CRISPR, revolutionizing the way we understand gene editing technology.
Imagine having the ability to edit the mutations out of your own genes. Genetic diseases like Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs and cystic fibrosis would become a thing of the past; this ability would change the face of medicine. The potential applications of gene editing are far-reaching — and new research from Cornell might get us closer to making these applications a reality. A recent study may have uncovered another mechanism of a new gene editing technique. Prof. Ailong Ke, molecular biology and genetics, has been leading research on the structure of Type I Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) systems, which have the potential to be more specific than current gene editing techniques.