Dana Carroll

Carroll established the use of programmable nucleases as tools for targeted manipulation of genomes. He demonstrated that zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) have the efficiency and specificity necessary to stimulate targeted mutagenesis by nonhomologous end joining and homologous gene replacement. He was the first to show that completely redesigned ZFNs could be used effectively in whole organisms (drosophila). He also characterized much of the biology behind nuclease-mediated genome editing and contributed to the optimization of successor TALEN and CRISPR-Cas platforms. Programmable nucleases have now been used effectively to modify the genomes of over 80 organisms and are now in human clinical trials.