DENMARK, S.C. (courtesy voorhees.edu) — Voorhees College faculty member Dr. Zhabiz Golkar recently had her article “CRISPR; a journey of Gene-editing based medicine,” published in the October issue of the Journal of Gene and Genomics.
Dr. Golkar was recognized by SCICU in 2017 as Voorhees College’s Excellence In Teaching award recipient. She was recognized at the April 2017 Excellence in Teaching awards banquet and received a $3,000 professional development grant from SCICU.
In her article, Golkar explains Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) advancements in CRISPR-based technologies have empowered scientists with an editing kit that allows them to employ their knowledge for deleting, replacing, and lately “Gene Surgery,” and provides unique control over genes in a broad range of species, and presumably in humans.
These fast-growing technologies have high strength and flexibility and are becoming versatile tools with implementations that alter the organism’s genome and are easily used for chromatin manipulation.
In addition to CRISPR’s popularity in genome engineering and modern biology, this major tool authorizes breakthrough discoveries and methodological advancements in science. As scientists are developing new types of experiments, some of the applications raise questions about what CRISPR can enable.
Golkar said CRISPR is one of the hallmarks of biological tools, contemplated as valid and hopeful alternatives to genome editing. “Advancements in CRISPR-based technologies have empowered scientists with an editing kit that allows them to employ their knowledge for deleting, replacing, and lately “Gene Surgery,” and provides unique control over genes in a broad range of species, and presumably in humans,” Golkar said.
She added, “The results of evidence-based research strongly suggest that CRISPR is becoming a practical tool for genome-engineering and creating genetically modified eukaryotes, which is needed to establish guidelines on new regulatory concerns for scientific communities.”
Golkar is currently the chairperson and associate professor of biology in the Department of Science, Technology, Health, and Human Services.