CRISPR and Beyond: Perturbations at Scale to Understand Genomes (Virtual Conference)

General Information

The development of CRISPR/Cas-based technologies and DNA synthesis make it possible to modulate genomes with relative ease. These tools can help us understand how genetic variation influences phenotype and thereby answer long-standing questions in biology that impact human health, laying the foundations for precision medicine for heritable diseases and cancer treatment.

This rapid advancement in gene-editing technology enables us to begin to understand the functional implications of natural and disease-related human genetic variation. This year’s programme will cover approaches that modulate the genome and its context at scale, from single nucleotides and genes to hundreds of growth environments.

We will discuss (i) assays that focus on individual nucleotides in coding and non-coding regions to understand the effects of single mutations; (ii) focused- and genome-wide randomization methods that assess the influence of changing sequence structure and content; (iii) genome-wide knock-out, knock-down, and upregulation experiments to measure the phenotype when a gene is perturbed; (iv) interaction screens to uncover context-specificity of effects; (v) methods and applications of gene editing (vi) single cell readouts and other emerging technologies. Computational approaches are integral to all these topics, and will be covered by invited speakers, as well as sought for in submitted abstracts.

This Wellcome Connecting Science conference will bring together biomedical researchers working on high throughput screening, genome engineering, and/or variant effect interpretation. We welcome abstracts on all major themes of this meeting to oral or poster presentations.

For more information and to register, visit the conference webpage.