Advancing Proteostasis Research Through Genome Editing

Aroosa Mir, a PhD candidate from the Laboratory of Cellular Proteostasis, is currently carrying out a research stay in the Andrew Wood Lab at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh. Aroosa is another scientist from IIMCB who is developing international research collaboration through the study visit programme as part of the RACE project.

The main goal of Aroosa’s stay is to generate HCT116 cell lines carrying a knock-in of the miniAID tag. As her project focuses on five genes of interest, Aroosa is working towards developing up to five HCT116 cell lines using a CRISPR-HOT-inspired, homology-independent knock-in strategy based on non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). This approach uses the NHEJ repair pathway to introduce the miniAID tag at specific genomic loci following CRISPR–Cas9 editing.

In parallel, Aroosa is also working on HDR-mediated CRISPR knock-in, which relies on homology-directed repair (HDR) to enable precise genomic insertion. In this part of the project, she is targeting two additional genes of interest.

Aroosa will be staying in Edinburgh until mid June 2026 – we are keeping our fingers crossed for the success of her research!