{"id":32798,"date":"2023-07-20T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T23:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-alumni-tyler-daniel-strives-for-excellence-in-genetic-engineering\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:03:12","slug":"montezuma-cortez-alumni-tyler-daniel-strives-for-excellence-in-genetic-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-alumni-tyler-daniel-strives-for-excellence-in-genetic-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez alumni Tyler Daniel strives for excellence in genetic engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MCHS
MCHS alumni Tyler Daniel is working on research in the realm of genetic engineering and how that can help cure certain diseases. (Wendy Daniel\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Tyler Daniel, who graduated from Montezuma-Cortez High School as valedictorian in 2014, is reaching a new frontier in science.<\/p>\n

Daniel is heading into his second year at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he is working on a doctoral degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering, specifically working on genetic engineering.<\/p>\n

Daniel attended Kemper Elementary and Montezuma-Cortez middle and high schools. He then attended Colorado State University and received degrees in chemical and biological engineering and in biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n

At Rice, he now hopes to help people who can\u2019t be treated with traditional pharmaceutical or medical means.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came here because I\u2019m working on genetic engineering, specifically, developing tools for treating human diseases through therapeutics and editing people\u2019s genes,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cThe motivation behind that is there\u2019s a lot of diseases that people have that pharmaceuticals or medical interventions can\u2019t necessarily treat and those diseases are based in genetics. They have kind of a genetic predisposition toward it, and there are things that maybe people are born with, and we know they have it, but we can\u2019t fix it. That\u2019s really the reason why I decided to start pursuing this field.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the time Daniel was in high school, CRISPR\/Cas Systems, a family of proteins found in organisms such as bacteria, used to destroy DNA and play a role in antiviral defense, was first applied to editing the human genome. This was the first tool that made the idea of genetic engineering a real possibility.<\/p>\n

Daniel said CRISPR\/Cas Systems \u2013 acronyms for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and CRISPR-associated proteins \u2013 fueled his interest in studying genetic engineering even more. Because it is fairly new, however, it isn\u2019t ready for widespread clinical use in non-life-threatening situations, making the need for research all the more important.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think being on the research side is the most impactful to make the technology safer and more applicable to general clinical use,\u201d Daniel said.<\/p>\n

Daniel gave the example of people who suffer from sickle cell anemia<\/a>, an inherited disease found mainly among Black people. A genetic defect in an abnormal and short-lived red blood cell (sickle cell) results in a deficient supply of oxygen, which can cause of variety of symptoms including dizziness, fatigue, jaundice, impotence and strokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a huge impact on their life, and blood transfusions and things like that can only do so much,\u201d Daniel said.<\/p>\n

With genetic engineering, Daniel said, scientists are learning how to rewrite a person\u2019s DNA to fix the abnormality causing the anemia. Other genetic diseases Daniel mentioned were Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, Huntington\u2019s and other neurological disorders that have genetic components.<\/p>\n

He also included atherosclerosis, heart disease and more.<\/p>\n

In the example of sickle cell anemia, Daniel said researchers are finding that CRISPR-associated proteins can be given a guide that pinpoints the mutation in someone\u2019s genes. From there, it can hunt throughout the cell after being injected into the body and fix the mutation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe program it to find a particular piece of DNA that is damaged in your body, and once we program it and send it into your cell, then it can go in and actually fix it,\u201d Daniel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only 10, 11 years old,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many clinical trials and tons and tons of research going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

To complete his Ph. D., Daniel said he has to add \u201cnovel, scientific information to the scientific community that no one else has done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to research something that no one else has and then publish a paper on it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Daniel\u2019s dissertation is on chemically induced dimerization.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically,\u201d Daniel said, \u201cit makes it where these genetic editing proteins in your body are not active. And then when you add a small molecule drug, they come together and they\u2019re active again.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Daniel\u2019s research it would help with a current problem with CRISPR where the protein \u201cedits things it\u2019s not supposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel\u2019s research, which would hopefully deactivate the CRISPR protein after it fixes the issue in the body, would keep it from causing harmful effects from remaining active.<\/p>\n

\"Montezuma-Cortez
Montezuma-Cortez High School senior Tyler Daniel with one of his bat houses in 2014. (Journal file photo)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It was Cortez Middle School teacher Gary Livick that first sparked Daniel\u2019s interest in DNA during a science class on that subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn eighth grade, he was telling us about the human genome project and its completion, and there was some big advancement and I just thought it was super interesting,\u201d Daniel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe kind of explained that there\u2019s this sequence of four letters in all of yourself and it\u2019s basically billions of letters long \u2026 everything is related to these four letters that are in all of your cells. Everything that\u2019s different from somebody else is related to this little code in your body,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since that lesson in middle school science, Tyler said that he wanted to be a scientist studying DNA,\u201d said his mother, Wendy Daniel.<\/p>\n

Daniel also credited former high school math teacher Susan Wisenbaker with sparking his interest in the study of engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe got me interested in the idea of going into engineering in general and gave me that mathematical background,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Daniel has also published a peer-reviewed paper<\/a> in Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering on his research into genetic engineering, specifically in the area of base editing with co-authors Hongzhi Zeng and Emmanuel Osikpa as well as his advisor Xue Gao. The title of the paper is \u201cRevolutionizing genetic disease treatment: recent technological advances in base editing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paper touches on the problem faced by CRISPR\/Cas Systems after its conception in 2012, and how \u201call it was able to do was search for a particular part of your DNA and cut it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat might help you as far as a disease or something if the protein isn\u2019t necessary, but the issue with that is if you just completely knock out a gene, then its original function is no longer there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Daniel\u2019s article focuses on the base editor developed by a researcher in 2016 that switches the letter of a genome to a different one instead of cutting it altogether, known as a point mutation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose allow precise control over what you\u2019re doing inside the genome,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cInstead of just cutting, you can actually go in now and fix that mutation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel emphasized that the support from his family and community helped him get to where he is today.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving the support of my community, family and wife has been so important to my journey to where I am today,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cJeremy Yarbrough at Coldstone Creamery and Alex Cudkowicz at Cedar Diagnostics gave me some incredible tools that I use on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

valedictorian is working toward a doctorate at Rice University in Texas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,36,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81933,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32798\/revisions\/81933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32798"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}