Molecular Horizons Seminar with Dr Carola Venturini

Molecular Horizons Seminar - Professor Petr Cejka


My laboratory is using biochemical tools to understand mechanisms of DNA double-strand break repair by homologous recombination. In the first part of the seminar, I will talk about how the breast cancer suppressor BRCA1 promotes the initial processing (resection) of DNA breaks. I will show that BRCA1 directly promotes long-range resection by BLM/DNA2 in conjunction with CtIP. In the second part of my talk, I will show that DNA breaks formed by Cas9 cannot be immediately processed because Cas9 bridges the broken DNA together. I will show that HLTF, a dsDNA translocase, can efficiently remove Cas9 from DNA, with potential implications for gene editing.