We are very proud to announce that Zhuokun from our team defended her thesis “Characterizing and improving CRISPR-Cas9 system with high-throughput methods” on 26 April, 2023.

Her main project at Haapaniemi Lab aimed to improve the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system, and involved screening hundreds of DNA repair protein fusions. 

The thesis focused on developing a high throughput platform which facilitates characterizing PAM of CRISPR system, also screened HDR-boosting Cas9 fusions and proposed a new potential mechanism of the Cas9-POLD3 fusion – accelerating the removal of Cas9 from its cleavage site.

As part of the PhD defense at UiO the candidate has to give a trial lecture, and the topic is given 2 weeks before defense. Zhuokun gave a lecture about Extending the genome editing toolbox: Approaches to discover new, so far unknown Cas proteins. (See disputation info here)

To celebrate Zhuokun’s PhD, the Haapaniemi group had a celebration dinner at the delicious Nam Kang restaurant in Oslo.

You can read more about Zhuokun’s research and her plans for the future from NCMM’s researcher profile.