Francisco Mojica

Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica[lower-alpha 1] (born October 5, 1963), usually known as Francisco Mojica, is a Spanish molecular biologist and microbiologist at the University of Alicante in Spain. He is known for his discovery of repetitive, functional DNA sequences in bacteria which he named CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). These were later developed into the first widespread genome editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9.[1]

Francisco Mojica
Born
Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica

October 5, 1963
Elche, Spain
NationalitySpain
CitizenshipSpain
Alma materUniversity of Valencia, University of Alicante
Known forDiscovery of CRISPR-Cas9
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular biology, microbiology
InstitutionsUniversity of Alicante
InfluencesFrancisco E. Rodríguez Valera, Guadalupe Juez Pérez

Early life and education

Francisco Mojica was born in Elche, Spain, on October 5, 1963. Mojica attended Los Andes elementary school, Vázquez de Mella school, and Instituto Carrus high school. Mojica enrolled first at the University of Murcia to study biology and later moved to the University of Valencia (BS, 1986) and University of Alicante (PhD, 1993). During his doctoral studies, he visited Paris-Sud University. He then received post-doctoral training at the University of Utah and the University of Oxford. Since 1994, Mojica has been a faculty member at the University of Alicante, were he has focused on molecular microbiology, which led to his discovery of the CRISPR system.

Career and research

The discovery of CRISPR

Francisco Mojica was the first researcher to characterize what is now called a CRISPR locus, reported in 1993. Part of the sequence was reported previously by Yoshizumi Ishino in 1987. Mojica described the complete gene sequence repeats in the archaeal organisms Haloferax and Haloarcula species, and studied their function.[2] He continued research on these sequences throughout the 1990s, and in 2000, Mojica recognized that what had been reported as disparate repeat sequences actually shared a common set of features, now known to be the hallmarks of CRISPR sequences. He coined the term CRISPR through correspondence with Ruud Jansen of Utrecht University, proposing the acronym of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats to alleviate the confusion stemming from the numerous acronyms used to describe the sequences in scientific literature.

CRISPR-Cas systems

In 2005 he published the first paper suggesting that CRISPR was an innate immune system from bacteria.[3] This publication got rejected from 4 major scientific journals and was published 2 years later. This finding led him to hypothesize, correctly, that CRISPR is an adaptive immune system.

Awards and honors

Honorary Degrees received

Publications

(A selection from those mentioned in the institutional page of the Universidad de Alicante,[12] and those referred by Lander in the article The Heroes of CRISPR[13])

  • F.J.M. Mojica, R.A. Garrett. Discovery and Seminal Developments in the CRISPR field (2013). In: CRISPR-Cas Systems: RNA-mediated adaptive immunity in Bacteria and Archaea. Barrangou, R. and van der Oost, J. (Eds.) Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Cap1. pp 1–31. ISBN 978-3-642-34656-9; DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34657-6_1.
  • Mojica, F.J.M., Juez, G., and Rodrı́guez-Valera, F. (1993). Transcription at different salinities of Haloferax mediterranei sequences adjacent to partially modified PstI sites. Mol. Microbiol. 9, 613–621
  • Mojica, F.J.M., Ferrer, C., Juez, G., and Rodrı́guez-Valera, F. (1995). Long stretches of short tandem repeats are present in the largest replicons of the Archaea Haloferax mediterranei and Haloferax volcanii and could be involved in replicon partitioning. Mol. Microbiol. 17, 85–93.
  • Mojica, F.J.M., Dı́ez-Villaseñor, C., Soria, E., and Juez, G. (2000). Biological significance of a family of regularly spaced repeats in the genomes of Archaea, Bacteria and mitochondria. Mol. Microbiol. 36, 244–246.
  • Mojica, F.J.M., Dı́ez-Villaseñor, C., Garcı́a-Martı́nez, J., and Soria, E. (2005). Intervening sequences of regularly spaced prokaryotic repeats derive from foreign genetic elements. J. Mol. Evol. 60, 174–182.
  • Mojica, F.J.M., and Garrett, R.A. (2012). Discovery and Seminal Developments in the CRISPR Field. In CRISPR-Cas Systems, R. Barrangou and J. van der Oost, eds. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg), pp. 1–31.
  • Makarova K.S., Wolf Y.I., Alkhnbashi O., Costa F., Shah S., Saunders S.J., Barrangou R., Brouns S.J.J., Charpentier E., Haft D.H., Horvath P., Moineau S., Mojica F.J.M., Terns R.M., Terns M.A., White M.F., Yakunin A.F., Garrett R.A., van der Oost J., Backofen R., Koonin E.V. (2015). An updated evolutionary classification scheme for CRISPR-Cas systems. Nature Rev Microbiology, 13: 722-736.
  • García-Gutiérrez E., Almendros C., Mojica F.J.M., Guzmán N.M., García-Martínez J. (2015). CRISPR content correlates with the pathogenic potential of Escherichia coli. PLoS ONE, 10(7): e0131935.
  • Almendros C., Mojica F.J.M. (2015). Exploring CRISPR-mediated interference by transformation with plasmid mixtures: identification of target interference motifs in Escherichia coli. Methods in Molecular Biology, 1311: 161-70.
  • Almendros C., Mojica F.J.M., Díez-Villaseñor C., Guzmán N.M., García-Martínez J. (2014). CRISPR-Cas functional module exchange in Escherichia coli. mBIO, 5 (1): e00767-13.
  • Mojica, F.J.M.; Díez-Villaseñor, C. (2013). "Right of admission reserved, no matter the path". Trends in Microbiology. 21 (9). pp. 446–448. ISSN 0966-842X. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  • Shah S.A., Erdmann S., Mojica F.J.M., Garrett R.A. (2013). Protospacer recognition motifs: mixed identities and functional diversity. RNA Biol, 10:891-899.
  • Díez-Villaseñor C., Guzmán N.M., Almendros C., García-Martínez J., Mojica F.J.M. (2013). CRISPR-spacer integration reporter plasmids reveal distinct genuine acquisition specificities among CRISPR-Cas I-E variants of Escherichia coli. RNA Biol, 10: 792-802.
  • Almendros C., Guzmán N.M., Díez-Villaseñor C., García-Martínez J. and Mojica F.J.M. (2012). Target Motifs Affecting Natural Immunity by a Constitutive CRISPR-Cas System in Escherichia coli. PLoS ONE, 7(11): e50797.
  • García-Heredia I., Martín-Cuadrado A.-B., Mojica F.J.M. , Santos F. , Mira A., Antón J. and Rodríguez-Valera F. (2012). Reconstructing Viral Genomes from the Environment Using Fosmid Clones: The Case of Haloviruses. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33802.
  • Kira S. Makarova, Daniel H. Haft, Rodolphe Barrangou, Stan Brouns, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Philippe Horvath, Sylvain Moineau, Francisco J. M. Mojica, Yuri I. Wolf, Alexander F. Yakunin, John van der Oost, and Eugene V. Koonin (2011). Evolution and classification of the CRISPR-Cas systems. Nature Rev Microbiology, 9: 467-477.
  • F.J.M. Mojica and C. Díez-Villaseñor (2010). The on-off switch of CRISPR immunity against phages in E. coli. Molecular Microbiology, 77:1341-1345.
  • S. Miquel, E. Peyretaillade, L. Claret, A. De Vallee, C. Dossat, B. Vacherie, E. Hajji Zineb, B. Segurens, V. Barbe, P. Sauvanet, C. Neut, J. Colombel, C. Medigue, F.J.M. Mojica, P. Peyret, R. Bonnet and A. Darfeuille-Michaud (2010). Complete genome sequence of Crohn's disease-associated adherent-invasive E. coli strain LF82. PLoS ONE, 5(9): e12714.
  • C. Díez-Villaseñor, C. Almendros, J. García-Martínez, and F.J.M. Mojica (2010). Diversity of CRISPR loci in Escherichia coli. Microbiology, 156: 1351-1361.
  • F. J. M. Mojica, C. Díez-Villaseñor, J. García-Martínez, C. Almendros (2009). Short motif sequences determine the targets of the prokaryotic CRISPR defence system. Microbiology, 155:733-740.

References

Notes

  1. This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Martínez and the second or maternal family name is Mojica.

Sources

  1. Ledford, Heidi (January 2017), "Five big mysteries about CRISPR's origins", Nature, 541 (7637): 280–282, doi:10.1038/541280a, PMID 28102279, S2CID 4458992
  2. Mojica, F.J., Juez, G. & Rodríguez-Valera, F. (1993): Transcription at different salinities of Haloferax mediterranei sequences adjacent to partially modified PstI sites, Molecular Microbiology, Vol. 9, Nr. 3, page 613-621.
  3. Mojica, Francisco J. M.; Díez-Villaseñor, César; García-Martínez, Jesús; Soria, Elena (February 2005). "Intervening sequences of regularly spaced prokaryotic repeats derive from foreign genetic elements". Journal of Molecular Evolution. 60 (2): 174–182. doi:10.1007/s00239-004-0046-3. ISSN 0022-2844. PMID 15791728. S2CID 27481111. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  4. Albany Medical Center. Gene Editing Pioneers Selected to Receive America’s Most Distinguished Prize in Medicine, August 15, 2017
  5. "PLuS Alliance Prize 2017 winners announced". King’s College London. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  6. "Francisco Martínez Mojica. Frontiers Of Knowledge Laureate. Biology and Biomedicine. 9th Edition". Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  7. "Martínez Mojica, honoris causa por la UPV". Universitat Politècnica de València (in Spanish). 2017-09-19. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  8. "El padre de la técnica CRISPR recibió el título de Doctor Honoris Causa de la UNQ". Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  9. "Francisco Martínez Mojica, doctor "honoris causa"". Universitat de València (in Spanish). 2018-01-11. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  10. "El microbiólogo Francis Mojica recibe el Doctor Honoris Causa en la UIMP - UIMP". Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  11. "Francisco J. Martínez Mojica, descubridor de las revolucionarias técnicas CRISPR, nuevo doctor Honoris Causa por la UMU". Universidad de Murcia (in Spanish). 2019-11-13. Retrieved 2020-10-09.
  12. "Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental - Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica", Universidad de Alicante, retrieved 1 August 2017
  13. Lander, Eric S. (2016), "The Heroes of CRISPR", Cell, 164 (1–2): 18–28, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.12.041, ISSN 0092-8674, PMID 26771483, retrieved 1 August 2017
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