RNA-Guided Natural Genome Editing and the Emergence of Complex Genomes

The ciliate Oxytricha is a single-celled eukaryote with multiple nuclei and two distinct nuclear genomes. In a feat of natural genome engineering, massive DNA rearrangements rebuild a product somatic genome from a much larger precursor germline genome after two cells mate. This process actively destroys nearly all noncoding DNA and rearranges more than 225,000 remaining short DNA pieces to build thousands of new gene-sized chromosomes during development. Noncoding RNAs orchestrate the entire process of natural genome editing.

In this talk, Laura Landweber will discuss our understanding of the RNA-guided mechanism and evolutionary origin of this extreme case of natural genome editing.

Landweber is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of biological sciences at Columbia University. She was previously on the faculty at Princeton University from 1994 to 2016 and a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, where she received her Ph.D. She previously served as president of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. She received an NIH Outstanding Investigator Award, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Blavatnik award for young scientists. She was elected a fellow of the AAAS for probing the diversity of genetic systems in microbial eukaryotes, including scrambled genes, RNA editing, variant genetic codes and comparative genomics.