The Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) featured our Assistant Professor of bioengineering Giulia Palermo’s research in its 2018 Young Investigators Virtual Issue released in July.

Her publication, “Protospacer adjacent motif-induced allostery activates CRISPR-Cas9,” was selected as one of 26 publications from young investigators featured in the special issue and highlighted in the cover of JACS with an artwork by the authors.

“This is a beautiful molecular dynamics study of how CRISPR-Cas9, the revolutionary new genome editing technology, is allosterically activated by a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM). Palermo's group shows that upon binding of PAM, a series of conformational changes are triggered, activating the Cas9 catalytic domains responsible for concerted cleavage of the two DNA strands. . . the study highlights the utility of theoretical studies in providing deep mechanistic insights that are simply not accessible experimentally,” said Professor Michelle Coote, associate editor for JACS.
Hyperlink to special issue: here