Our Public Lecture series returns on Monday 19 September, 7pm, as we welcome Professor Matthew Cobb to speak at St Peter’s.

The Brave New World of CRISPR Gene Editing

A new gene editing technique known as CRISPR has swept through biological research and is about to undergo its first clinical trials. Scientists are even considering using it to completely eliminate invasive or disease-transmitting species.

In just three years, CRISPR has become a potential game-changer in biology, medicine and ecology. But the immense power of this technique raises a series of ethical problems that the whole of humanity is going to have to come to terms with.

This talk will look at the science of CRISPR – how it works and how it was discovered – and will also explore the ethical issues that we all need to understand.

Please either print off your ticket or display it to us on your smartphone or tablet on the evening.

About the speaker

Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. As well as teaching about evolution and animal behaviour, he studies the sense of smell. Most of this research is done on fruit fly maggots, but he has recently studied the sense of smell in our extinct relatives the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, by exploring their genomes. He is also interested in the history of science – his most recent book is Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code, which in 2015 was short-listed for the Royal Society Winton Science Book Prize.