New York Times columnist and renowned author Carl Zimmer will be giving a lecture on his newest book, titled She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity, on March 7th at 5:30pm at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center. Free and open to all, a reception and book signing will follow the event.

In a new study in cells, University of Illinois researchers have adapted CRISPR gene-editing technology to cause the cell’s internal machinery to skip over a small portion of a gene when transcribing it into a template for protein building. This gives researchers a way not only to eliminate a mutated gene sequence, but to influence how the gene is expressed and regulated.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system has given researchers the power to precisely edit selected genes. Now, researchers have used it to develop a technology that can target any gene in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and turn it off by deleting single letters from its DNA sequence.