A Prestigious €1.2 Million Grant Awarded to a Researcher at the VU Life Sciences Centre

Dr Stephen Knox Jones Jr, a biochemist at Vilnius University (VU) Life Sciences Centre (LSC), and his team have received a prestigious €1.2 million grant. Awarded by the European Research Council, his Starting Grant is the first in Lithuania. Spanning the next five years, Dr Jones will lead a project entitled Profile nucleases and Repurpose Off-Targets to Expand Gene Editing, which aims to improve gene editing techniques.

High award for Lithuanian science 

"I see the significance of this grant at several levels - national, university and personal. At the national level, it shows that Lithuania’s investments in science pay off, and that its contributions to European research are coming back. This creates a cycle that is important for impactful funding. Furthermore, this reflects the high calibre of academic research in Lithuania.

It is also an excellent accolade for the university. First, it delivers an essential message to our community that these grants are achievable. Second, it will have a significant impact in a process that I call institutional memory. Since our application was successful, the entire team involved in the submission phase has gained knowledge that they can share and employ for future projects of similar scale", says Dr S.K. Jones.

For the scientist himself, this application, which required enormous effort and detailed planning, is an outside validation that he is on the right path: "Will I have complete freedom now that I received funding? Not really, because when receiving this amount of money, you are expected to achieve big goals, to make big contributions to society, which is binding. However, now I can concentrate on the research and not think about money.”

The aim of the study is to extend and improve the use of gene editing tools

Combining chemistry, biology and epigenetics, the project Profile nucleases and Repurpose Off-Targets to Expand Gene Editing aims to discover and characterize broad classes of programmable nucleases, focusing on uncovering their mechanisms of specificity. We pursue this goal by engineering and harnessing next-generation biochemistry methods. These combine high-throughput DNA sequencing with classical biochemistry and bioinformatics.

"Gene editing allows the genetic content of a living organism to be altered by changing the sequence of DNA in cells. However, we aim to improve existing gene editing tools to make them safer and more widely used. Our project proposes two ways to do this.

First, nuclease profiling builds on the idea that most gene editing relies on a programmable nuclease to find and cut specific genetic sequences, thereby editing them. Only a few gene editing technologies are available today. However, when working with a different organism or gene, we may need different tools. The first part of the project aims to expand the set of gene-editing technologies and expose how they work," explains the researcher.

The second part of the project is about evaluating each programmable nuclease (the most famous type of which is CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-cutting and insertion technology discovered by a team led by Prof. Virginijus Siksnys, Head of Department of Protein - DNA Interactions at VU LSC Institute of Biotechnology). According to Dr S.K. Jones, the problematic aspect of this process is that when using such a tool, it is directed to cut a specific gene, but along the way, the tool may also alter another gene with a similar sequence – an ‘off-target’. This inaccuracy can be a major problem, and the proposal aims to address this. The team will expose each nuclease’s capability to target the right gene and find ways to leverage this flexibility to improve the technology.

More efficient crop production and medical diagnostics    

Society can benefit from more efficient gene editing technologies in many areas. In particular, in the food industry, gene editing can lead to more nutritious and high-yielding fruit, vegetables and cereals, as well as more resilient varieties that can withstand extreme weather caused by climate change. Gene editing techniques could also lead to more accurate disease diagnosis and faster elimination of genetic diseases.

"This is how gene editing and the ability to tweak organisms could slow our contributions to climate change. So there is a lot of potential in this research, which is being carried out by our team of six," says the scientist. 

For the 2022 ERC Starting Grants, 2932 applications were submitted, and 408 were selected for funding after two selection rounds. These grants are awarded to researchers 2-7 years after the award of their PhD. This is the first time Lithuania has received an ERC research grant for early career researchers. The grant amounts to €1.2 million over 5 years.

In the 15 years of the European Commission-funded programme's existence, this is the second time that Lithuania has received an ERC grant overall. The first ERC Advanced Grant was awarded in 2017 to Prof. Saulius Klimašauskas, Head of the Department of Biological DNA Modification at VU LSC Institute of Biotechnology. ERC grants are European Commission funded support for researchers' research activities. These grants aim to support high-quality projects by established and independent researchers, stimulate the dynamism and creativity of researchers, and strengthen the progress of European science.