FUTURE HUMAN
Rewriting DNA for Fun and Profit
CRISPR in the eyes of one of its pioneers, Jennifer Doudna
CRISPR is fast becoming a household term, with one of the key scientists exploring this gene-editing mechanism following close behind. Jennifer Doudna, PhD, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored a breakthrough paper in 2012 examining how it works and suggesting how it might be harnessed by humans. Such a tool is already beginning to transform agriculture, medicine, and our understanding of the human species. It’s also dusting up a fair amount of controversy.
With transformative technologies come ethical questions: How should CRISPR be used, for what, and by whom? No surprise, these questions are being debated in boardrooms and in the courts as leading scientists compete for startup funding and face off against their former collaborators in patent disputes about who can use the tech.
“CRISPR is a big deal because this gives scientists, really, for the first time, an easy tool for altering the code of life.”
Doudna’s seminal paper showed that a process by which bacteria build defenses against viruses, called CRISPR-Cas9, could be programmed to manipulate other…
