In this interview, News Medical speaks to Assistant Professor Ryan Jackson about his latest work, published in tandem Nature papers, detailing the discovery of a new CRISPR immune system.

Please can you introduce yourself and tell us about your professional background?

I am an Assistant Professor at Utah State University (USU). I use biochemical and structural techniques to understand how the molecules that perform the reactions of life function. I’ve been working in the CRISPR field since 2011. I started as a postdoc in Blake Wiedenheft’s lab at Montana State University, and in 2016 I started my own research lab at USU. I earned both of my degrees (a B.S. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry) from USU, so joining the faculty was like coming home. My research lab specializes in determining the structure and function of newly discovered and obscure CRISPR systems.