
The fascination with biochemistry sparked by The Double Helix, the thrill of her first invitation to Cold Spring Harbor, and the melancholy of her last visit to the disgraced genius.
While we wait for Nathaniel Comfort’s upcoming biography of James Watson, Jennifer Doudna’s story in The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson offers a revealing lens on the scientist whose outstanding legacy is overshadowed by his offensive claims about intelligence and race. Doudna crossed paths with Watson three times — moments that shaped both her imagination and her opinion of the man who helped discover the structure of DNA.
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Refining, chiselling, correcting DNA letter by letter. You can do it simultaneously in dozens of selected sites, or in one place, leaving no trace. A new kind and powerful technique is changing the face of biology. Cheap and easy to handle but precise as a laser. It allows reaserchers to change living organisms as they wish, by carefully targeting their DNA. It doesn’t bombard them by means of random mutations, it doesn’t cut and sew the DNA in a traditional way, as in the past. Will it transform medicine, agriculture and the world as we know it? Enthusiasm and fears are chasing each other, and this book explains the unfolding revolution. Welcome to the age of CRISPR.