Kira S. Makarova (Russian: Кира Макарова) is an American evolutionary biologist known for her research on the biology of CRISPR and Cas9.
She instead entered the Moscow Medical Institute, but after marrying and having a child she moved to Novosibirsk State University to be closer to her husband's family.
[2] Her work at the institute involved the design of synthetic oligonucleotides and, separately, the use of oligopeptide frequency data to classify proteins.
[1] When Makarova's husband moved to the US to work with Eugene Koonin in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Koonin found Makarova a position as research fellow at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, studying Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium that can survive several different extreme conditions.
[3][4] Makarova's ongoing research involves comparative genomics, and the genetics and protein functions of archaea.