Tag Archives: Jennifer Doudna

A decade of CRISPR is only the beginning

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CRISPR past, present, and future according to the review by Jennifer Doudna and Joy Y. Wang just published in Science. This is the original caption: “The past decade of CRISPR technology has focused on building the platforms for generating gene knockouts, creating knockout mice and other animal models, genetic screening, and multiplexed editing. CRISPR’s applications in medicine and agriculture are already beginning and will serve as the focus for the next decade as society’s demands drive further innovation in CRISPR technology.”

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Ode to Darwin, from Phages to Borgs

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Phages first, Borgs then. Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield published surprising new findings in Cell, suggesting that thousands of phages have stolen CRISPR from bacteria to deploy it against rivals. “CRISPR is so popular even viruses may use it,” Science jokes. Nature puts it seriously “CRISPR tools found in thousands of viruses could boost gene editing.”

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Nobel portraits, mind & hand

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CRISPR inventors Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, portrayed by Herlinde Koelbl for the book Fascination of Science, which the photographer (famous for her work on Angela Merkel) dedicated to leading scientists. The photos, currently on display at the Koch Institute, capture “the connection between the personal & the pursuit of knowledge—between mind & hand—of pioneering scientists across the globe.”

Gender equity meets CRISPR

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Navneet Matharu, Jenny Hamilton and Lin Du

The Women in Enterprising Science Program (WIES) is located on the UC Berkeley campus and is supported by the foundation of Solina Chau Hoi Shuen (co-founder of Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong). The initiative, aiming to enhance gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship, was presented last March by IGI, the institute founded by Jennifer Doudna. In the pictures above you can see the inaugural cohort of fellows, announced this month.

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CRISPR WOMEN – faces and feats

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They may have lost the latest round in the patent dispute, but Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will be forever celebrated as the inventors of CRISPR.
In “The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson, Doudna tells how a school’s guidance counselor tried to discourage her from studying chemistry at college: “Girls don’t do science.”
The Nobel prize came a few decades and many brilliant experiments later, it’s the first shared by two women. The institute founded by Doudna (IGI) is now launching an ad hoc incubator specifically to enhance gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship. Jennifer and Emmanuelle are unquestionably great role models for girls interested in science and started a wave of discoveries and inventions by female scientists.
In the slideshow below, you can meet some of the brightest women in CRISPR.

MetaCRISPR, how to edit microbiomes

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Jill Banfield and Jennifer Doudna (photo by Keegan Houser)

The best way to summarize the new metaCRISPR approach, recently published in Nature Microbiology, is the Twitter thread by Jill Banfield:

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CRISPR landmark trial: who said what?

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Credit Intellia Therapeutics

Here you can read a selection of notable comments about the landmark paper on in vivo genome-editing published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 26 June. The trial, conducted in the UK and New Zealand, produced the first-ever clinical data supporting the safety and efficacy of intravenous infusion of a single-dose CRISPR treatment. The treatment, developed by two US-based companies (Intellia Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals) targets a rare and fatal condition called transthyretin amyloidosis.

Jennifer Doudna (CRISPR co-inventor and co-founder of Intellia): “It’s a critical first step in being able to inactivate, repair, or replace any gene that causes disease, anywhere in the body” (source Science).

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RNA moments

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Soon after co-discovering the double helix, Francis Crick coined the term “central dogma of biology” to illustrate the flow of genetic information within biological systems. The basic idea is simple: DNA is the king of the cell, proteins are its major workforce, and RNA is a sort of a middle manager. He later admitted that dogma was a poor word choice for a rule that has exceptions. Indeed, he became one of the proponents of the RNA world hypothesis, where RNA is the primordial substance in the evolutionary history of life on Earth. We can only guess what the great British scientist might say about RNA taking the stage today.

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