COLUMBO: Engineered CRISPR toolbox for revolutionizing single-cell genome imaging in embryogenesis and oncology

Growing evidence has revealed that numerous cellular processes in healthy and diseased cells are orchestrated by genomic organization and dynamics. However, our understanding of this is still inadequate, mainly due to the limitations of the available technologies. We aim to revolutionize the field of genomic DNA imaging by bringing together our patent-pending reengineered CRISPR-(d)Cas9 with several other cutting-edge DNA nanotechnologies into a single functional complex, delivering long-awaited specificity, sensitivity, multiplexing and combinations thereof, that are particularly challenging in living cells. The ambition of high-throughput imaging of both the genome and transcriptome level will be supported through development of novel bioinformatics tools next to automated microfluidics and imaging workflows. This high risk/high gain project with overarching impact on the fields of cancer, embryogenesis, aging, neurogenesis among many others will be supported by truly interdisciplinary team of 4 groups from 3 different departments.

Keywords:CRISPR-Cas9, genome imaging, transcriptomics, xenobiotic nucleotides and XNA, microfluidics, single cell imaging and analysis, DNA and protein engineering, embryogenesis, cancer, machine learning, bioinformatics data integration

Disciplines:Medical molecular engineering of nucleic acids and proteins, Microfluidics/flow chemistry, Genetics, Single-cell data analysis, Data visualisation and high-throughput image analysis, Cell division, Developmental biology, Embryology, Cancer biology, Medical genomics, Medical transcriptomics, Bioinformatics data integration and network biology, Computational biomodelling and machine learning, Computational transcriptomics and epigenomics