Date: November 24th, 2025
Time: 1300-1400 hrs
Location: AZ Young LT, Anatomy building
Title: ‘The Mechanism and Origin of RNA-Guided Genome Editing in the Ciliate Oxytricha’
Abstract. Oxytricha is a single-celled eukaryote with multiple nuclei and two distinct nuclear genomes. In a feat of natural genome engineering, massive DNA rearrangements rebuild a product somatic genome from a much larger, precursor germline genome, after two cells mate. This process actively destroys nearly all non-coding DNA and rearranges over 225,000 remaining short DNA pieces to build thousands of new gene-sized chromosomes during development. Noncoding RNAs orchestrate the entire process of natural genome editing. In this talk, I will discuss our understanding of the RNA-guided mechanism and evolutionary origin of this extreme case of natural genome editing.
Biography. Laura is a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. She was previously on the faculty at Princeton from 1994-2016, and a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, where she received her PhD. She has served as President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in 2017. Awards include an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Blavatnik award for young scientists. She was elected a Fellow of AAAS for probing the diversity of genetic systems in microbial eukaryotes, including scrambled genes, RNA editing, variant genetic codes, and comparative genomics. https://systemsbiology.columbia.edu/news/qa-with-dr-laura-landweber