Registration is required.

Welcome to the Peer-to-Peer Teaching Spring Season 2023. These sessions are taught by our own community members to fill knowledge gaps and keep up with the accelerated pace at which bioinformatics grows as well as other data analysis methodologies.

This session dedicated to off-target prediction, will be led by our colleague Paola Carneiro, who is a Postgraduate Associate in the lab of Dr. Stefania Nicoli, Yale Cardiovascular Research Center.

Description:

​​Gene editing by using CRISPR has drawn a lot of attention since it offers the ability to precisely modify genetic material. This cutting-edge technique enables researchers to specifically alter an organism's DNA, opening up new directions for research and applications in several scientific fields, such as medicine. By utilizing tools like CRISPR-Cas9, scientists may edit specific genes, fix mutations, or introduce desirable genetic changes. However, potential off-target effects pose concerns about applicability of this technique in the clinical field. In this context, the development of bioinformatic tools for predicting off-target effects has emerged.

COSMID,CHOPCHOP, CCTop, CRISPOR, Cas-OFFinder are some of the bioinformatic tools available for screening off-target regions in a specific reference organism genome. Nevertheless, genetic variability is an important factor to be considered for application in the clinical field. In this workshop you will learn how to screen for potential off-targets in the human genome using different predictors output and also the possible implications of variability in these regions.

Attendees to this session will learn:

• predict off-target regions by using different bioinformatic tools.

• evaluate polymorphic sites in off-target regions by using gnoMAD and ABraOM databases

• evaluate the probability of cleavage for predicting off-target regions.

• understanding key features to be considered in off-target screening.

Requirements: this workshop will be a demonstration. No need to bring your laptop. Previous knowledge of bash and python are helpful but not necessary.