Krzysztof Chylinski, PhD

“CRISPR-Switch allows us to control gene editing in space and time, while ensuring an incredibly rapid on/off switch and with minimal unspecific effects. I am excited about the future applications of our method, as I am sure labs all over the world will soon find its benefits.”

Kryzysztof Chylinski completed his doctoral studies at the University of Vienna, in the laboratory of Emmanuelle Charpentier and Renée Schroeder at Max F. Perutz Laboratories, where, from 2008, he worked on RNA binding proteins in Streptococcus pyogenes, but soon focused on CRISPR-Cas type II, which is a bacterial immune tool. CRISPR-Cas eventually became the topic of his doctorate.

Research conducted with colleagues from the laboratory on molecular mechanisms as well as the differentiation and evolution of type II CRISPR resulted in publications, among others in Nature and Science. These mechanisms also began to attract the attention of other researchers after Chylinski and colleagues proposed and described ways to use CRISPR type II as genome editing tools (now known as CRISPR / Cas9). From 2014, Chylinski continued his research on CRISPR / Cas9 together with Peggy Stolt-Bergner, together they created the CRISPR-Lab

Chylinski continued his work on CRISPR-Cas9 at the Vienna BioCenter Core Facilities (VBCF) until 2020. He has received the Vienna BioCenter PhD award, the Bank Austria Research Award, and the Award of Excellence from the Austrian Federal government for his critical contributions.