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Department of Animal Sciences

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2020 William E. Krauss Director's Award for Excellence in Graduate Research

May. 3, 2020

Joonbum Lee, a PH.D. student in Dr. Kichoon Lee’s Functional Genomics Laboratory recently received the 2020 William E. Krauss Director’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research for his lead authored paper entitled "Direct delivery of adenoviral CRISPR/Cas9 vector into quail blastoderms for generation of knockout birds" published in July 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. This journal has an Impact Factor of 9.58 which is excellent for a journal in the biological sciences. His paper was selected for mention in a front section of the print journal called “In This Issue” to highlight particularly interesting articles published in that issue of PNAS.

 The Functional Genomics Laboratory led by Dr. Kichoon Lee in the Department of Animal Sciences focuses on development of avian genome editing method and discovery the function of novel genetic factors using avian transgenic and knockout models. Recently, our group developed a new avian genome editing method; direct injection of adenovirus containing the CRISPR/Cas9 system into avian blastoderm, leading to successful generation of quail with targeted genome edition in melanophilin or myostatin genes for changing feather color and increasing muscle mass. This new method is expected to accelerate avian genome editing and advance avian research, biological and biomedical fields, and poultry industry.