Sebald Verkuijl

BBSRC DTP DPhil Student

Sebald is a student on the interdisciplinary bioscience DTP DPhil program. Before starting his DPhil he studied biomedical sciences and worked hands-on in molecular genetics wet-labs, specifically with CRISPR. He is interested in (eukaryotic) synthetic biology, genetic engineering, gene drive, and forming a startup.

His DPhil project is focused on applying computational modelling to better understand how gene editing and CRISPR gene drives work within individual organisms.

Publications:

Verkuijl, SAN, Gonzalez, E, Li, M, Ang, J, Kandul, NP, Anderson, MAE, Akbari, OS, Bonsall, MB, Alphey, L (2020) A CRISPR endonuclease gene drive reveals two distinct mechanisms of inheritance bias. bioRxiv 2020.12.15.421271.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.15.421271

Projects

Genetic Insect Control

Pest insects do enormous damage to human health (through transmission of diseases such as dengue fever and malaria) and to agriculture (through damage to crops or livestock). Our cross-disciplinary research programme explores ecological and genetic aspects of novel methods to control insect populations. We focus primarily on a transgenic variant of the Sterile Insect Technique, an area-wide method of biological pest control in which large numbers of sterile pest insects are released; these mate with wild insects, but no offspring result, so the population’s reproductive potential is reduced and numbers are suppressed.