This Gene-Editing Breakthrough Could Change Life on Earth
The discovery of the gene-editing technology CRISPR came, in part, from Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s very profound,” she told NBC News. “It means that we can control human evolution now.”
With collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, Doudna was able to harness a curiosity in the DNA of certain bacteria and help turn CRISPR into the world’s most accessible gene-editing technology. The discovery is detailed in Doudna’s new book titled “A Crack in Creation.”
In the book, Doudna says that the days of costly, complicated processes to edit DNA are over. We’re now in an age of CRISPR, and it’s a profoundly simple technique. Doudna compares CRISPR to word-processing software that allows someone to correct a typo in a hefty document.
At the Innovative Genomics Institute in Berkeley where Doudna is executive director, teams of scientists are working to find new approaches to treating disorders like cancer, sickle cell anemia, and some forms of blindness. But CRISPR isn’t limited to Doudna’s lab. Its low cost and ease of use have helped the technology proliferate to labs all over the world…
