Cas nucleases - 2024 ACF Nationals

Question

The “collateral” activation of these proteins is the core of the SHERLOCK and HOLMES methods. The SpRY (10[1])(“spry”) variant of one of these proteins is significantly more (10[1])promiscuous because it lacks key arginines at positions 1333 and 1335. A tool co-developed by Dana-Farber and the Broad (“brohd”) for designing experiments with these proteins (10[1])is called MAGeCK (10[1])(“mah-GECK”). “Dead” examples (10[1])of these proteins have been deactivated by mutations in both the HNH (10[1])and RuvC domain. (10[3])One of these proteins from S. pyogenes (“pye-OJ-uh-neez”) has been engineered to be “near-PAMless,” (10[1])expanding its range but increasing the chance of off-target cleavage. (-5[1])One-vector systems package these proteins alongside the sgRNAs (-5[1])that (-5[1])encode their target sequences. (10[1])For 10 points, name these endonucleases that are (10[1])directed by guide RNAs (10[2])produced from CRISPR (“crisper”) sequences. (10[1])■END■ (10[6]0[2])

ANSWER: Cas nucleases [or CRISPR associated proteins; accept CRISPR/Cas9 or Cas12a or Cas13a; prompt on DNA endonucleases or RNA endonucleases until “endonucleases” is read; reject “CRISPR”] (MAGeCK designs GeCKo knockout libraries.)

= Average correct buzz position

Buzzes

Player	Team	Opponent	Buzz Position	Value
Michal Gerasimiuk	Stanford	Cornell A	16	10
Swapnil Garg	Berkeley A	Northwestern	25	10
Wenying Wu	Toronto A	Michigan	50	10
Amith Punyala	WUSTL B	Rutgers	53	10
Paul Lee	WUSTL A	Chicago A	55	10
Rohan Shelke	Berkeley B	Chicago D	67	10
Bryan Ugaz	Arizona State	Florida	70	10
Aditya Sharma	Duke	Claremont Colleges	70	10
Jason Hong	Brown	Maryland	70	10
David Bass	Johns Hopkins	Yale A	83	10
Vishal Kanigicherla	Penn	Columbia B	93	-5
Jeffrey Fung	Harvard	Cornell B	101	-5
Ben Weiner	Minnesota A	Purdue	102	-5
Moses Kitakule	Columbia A	Chicago B	106	10
Alex Akridge	Indiana	Waterloo	114	10
Vincent Du	North Carolina A	Texas	118	10
Jason Zhang	Toronto B	Virginia	118	10
Albert Zhang	Columbia B	Penn	122	10
Fred Garvey	Truman State	Chicago C	123	10
Sarod Nori	Cornell B	Harvard	123	10
Conor Thompson	Iowa State	Georgia Tech	123	10
Andrew Wang	Illinois	NYU	123	10
Jack Oberman	South Carolina	Kentucky	123	0
Andrew Kelley	Kentucky	South Carolina	123	0
Ivvone Zhou	North Carolina B	Vanderbilt	123	10
Lydia Tarekegn	Yale B	Ottawa	123	10

Summary

Tournament	Edition	Exact Match?	TUH	Conv. %	Power %	Neg %	Average Buzz
2024 ACF Nationals	04/21/2024	Y	23	91%	0%	13%	89.29