Alrighty. Oh, wait. Do you want to be in this? I think I'd have to get a bigger chair.
Hey y'all, Giulio here. Why'd you have to
jump from there? It the thinker
I guess it doesn't want to think, he wants
to fly. I'm in this biology course,
biology 432 where we go learn about
research techniques and then go see them
in a lab and so of course, I brought a camera and I will show you what the PhD
student Laryssa has shown me of CRISPR. So first is the infamous CRISPR/Cas9
so CRISPR is this whole method Cas9 is
a protein in red that will come in
and chop DNA so in green is where it's
chopping but it's only gonna chop right
after a sequence from a guide RNA and
the guide RNA is just a sequence here
that we'll find in the DNA, the exact
sequence to localize where it should be
cutting so so then you can target which
mutation you want from that. Now if you
put the DNA for making the CRISPR gene
and this guide RNA in little loop of DNA
and shove it into a bacteria that
bacteria can then infect a plant and
shove that DNA into the plant and then
the plant will express that gene and
make the Cas9 protein inside the
plant that will cut its own DNA and that
was your plan are all along. So then we
can make the plant produce the scissors
that will cut its DNA and remove a gene
and we plan which gene by using this
guide RNA here and then once that gene
is removed we can see what the plant
does without it and so we can study that
gene
Hi Laryssa, hello. How long have you been
working at this lab? I've been working in
this lab for about two-and-a-half years
now but prior to that I was working in
another lab for pretty much my whole
undergraduate degree. So yeah I guess
you're a really big fan then?  Yeah you
could say so I've lasted this long so.
Did you go in think you were gonna do a
molecular bio and things like that?
Not really I actually, so when I started
working in research which was after my
first year of undergrad I started doing
more like ecology based research and
then I sort of transitioned into cell
biology and then after I graduated and
started here for grad school that was
when I really got into doing the
molecular biology so it was sort of like
a progression of a lot of different things.
What are some of the favorite
technology you've worked with?
I really really fell in love with doing
microscopy so I did everything from like
confocal microscopy to scanning electron
microscopy to transmission electron
microscopy so those were like awesome
skills to learn how to do and it was
just so beautiful to see you know the
cells and everything that I was looking
at just looking so so beautiful under
the microscope. I'm still really
into microscopy but something that I've
sort of moved towards now is doing live
cell imaging so instead of like killing
and fixing cells now I can watch things
happening in real time which is awesome.
I think what's really cool is that a lot
of all of these techniques basically
that we use can be applied to such a
broad spectrum of different model
systems so it's very interesting to me
to look at the different model systems
so for example Arabidopsis in
plants or yeast or drosophila or mouse
and to look at like how you can apply
these techniques to all of these
different organisms and it's very
interesting if somebody has applied or
really made a technique work in one
organism to be able to adapt it for
another so I think that's really
valuable as well.
I'm getting interviewed. You're still here?yeah we
go home. Oh this is cool. So what'd you think?
I dig it. I'm gonna be thinking about the
possibilities. Get it? Cause he's the thinker.
