Cracking CRISPR
Rodolphe Barrangou, an associate professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences, captured both the 2016 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize and the 2016 Canada Gairdner Award for his pioneering work on the gene-editing system known as CRISPR.
Barrangou’s work has garnered national and international acclaim, and these awards signal the growing importance of his work. Of the Gairdner’s more than 320 recipients, 83 have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in medicine.
Barrangou’s research focuses on understanding the genetic basis for health-promoting and fermentative properties of beneficial bacteria used in foods. His work has shown that CRISPR systems defend bacteria against unwanted invaders. Barrangou is mostly concerned with CRISPR-Cas systems that use Cas9 proteins as scalpels to cleave away foreign DNA. Possible applications for his findings include genome editing, antibacterial and antimicrobial production, food safety, food production and plant breeding.
Barrangou received the 2014 NC State Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award and the 2015 NC State Faculty Scholars Award. He was on the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list in 2014 and 2015.
