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Rice doctoral student wins top poster prize at CRISPR conference

Qichen Yuan's poster was based on research co-authored by his adviser, Xue “Sherry” Gao.

Qichen Yuan standing in front of poster

Qichen Yuan, a third-year doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) at Rice, is one of the three winners of the poster prize in the CRISPR 2022 conference, Cambridge, Mass., June 12-16.

Yuan’s poster is titled “Multiplex base- and prime-editing with drive-and-process CRISPR arrays,” and is based on research recently published in Nature Communications, co-authored by his adviser, Xue “Sherry” Gao, the T.N. Law Assistant Professor of ChBE.

Yuan and Gao have devised a genome-editing strategy capable of correcting dozens of errors in multiple genes simultaneously with high precision and efficiency. It represents a possible breakthrough for patients suffering from diseases caused by a combination of mutations.

The National Institutes of Health supported the research.