“The Code Breaker”: Jennifer Doudna and how CRISPR can revolutionize humanity

When Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year, there was no black tie ceremony in Sweden. Because of the pandemic, she picked up the medal in her backyard.

Correspondent David Pogue asked Doudna: “Let’s get to the really important thing: where do you keep your Nobel?”

“Well, actually, I have the replica at home, just a small frame, and I have the real medal hidden in a safe,” she replied.

Doudna is a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley. She and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize for their 2012 work on a scientific breakthrough frequently described with words like “miraculous”: the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR, and acronym of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

Pogue asked, “What does that look like in the real world? Is it a computer? Is it software?”

“It’s not a computer and it’s not software. If you looked at it in my lab, you would see a tube of colorless liquid,” Doudna said.

Two hits, in fact. The former contains molecules that have been designed to attach to a particular gene in the cells of a living being – a specific part of its DNA. The proteins in the other liquid cut the DNA there. “It’s like a zip code that you can go to to find a particular place in a cell’s DNA and literally, like scissors, do a snip,” Doudna said.

Cut DNA like that in general deactivate a gene. We can turn off a gene that gives us a disease, or turn off the gene that limits the growth of cashmere goat fur or the amount of muscle a beagle develops.

The next step is much more difficult: swap in a different DNA sequence, replacing it with something we have created on our own. We’ll be able to rewrite the genes of any plant, animal or person.

Walter Isaacson is the author of bestselling books on Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. Her latest, “The Code Breaker” (published by Simon & Schuster, part of ViacomCBS), focuses on Jennifer Doudna and her work on CRISPR. “When I started this book, I was like, ‘OK, biotechnology and CRISPR, this is the most amazing thing happening in our time,’ Isaacson said. “And then I realized in the end I was discreet the case.”

Since Doudna published her article in 2012, a lot has been happening in CRISPR laboratories around the world. Scientists have produced more nutritious tomatoes and created wheat that does not contain gluten. Clinical trials are underway to treat certain cancers using CRISPR techniques.

These medical treatments show the most breathtaking possibilities of CRISPR. About 7,000 human diseases are caused by genetic mutations that, in theory, we can simply eliminate. They include muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, and sickle cell anemia, a blood disease that results in debilitating pain, infections, and early death. It affects approximately 100,000 Americans, including Victoria Gray, a Mississippi mother of four who became the first American to be treated with genes attached by CRISPR.

In the year following the experimental treatment, she had no severe pain or hospitalization.

Of course, like any revolutionary technology, this one has a dark side, with predictions of humans reimagined. Pogue asked Doudna, “The headlines are always about ‘Oh, what you’ve been unleashing are designer babies! “Like, people are going to say, ‘I want a blonde, blue haired, super smart, super muscular.’ Is that real? ‘

“Well, yes and no. Mostly no,” Doudna replied. “We don’t really know which genes need to be changed for the types of traits you mentioned. And I suspect we’re talking about dozens, if not more, of genes that should be changed. we myself are on the verge of a world of CRISPR babies.

“But it’s close enough, in the sense that technology could basically allow it, that I think it’s critical that we have a discussion about this.”

Isaacson said: “Most people who have studied this say you have to draw a line between what is medically necessary – in other words, trying to make sure people don’t get sickle cell or sickle cell disease. of Huntington – but that’s a fuzzy line. I mean, if you try to improve a person’s memory to make sure they don’t have Alzheimer’s disease, you also improve their memory. ”

There is also a difference between changing a person’s genes, like Victoria Gray’s, and changes that will be passed on to their children.

In 2018, Chinese doctor edited embryos of three Chinese babies so that they and their descendants are resistant to the HIV virus. Scientists around the world have condemned him for becoming a thug.

“At first in China, for about a day, he was celebrated as the first person to create branded babies,” Isaacson said. “But even the Chinese were appalled at what he did, and eventually he was tried and placed under house arrest.”

Since that event, Doudna has organized a series of international conferences designed to develop ethical guidelines for the use of CRISPR, so that agreements are in place before a disaster strikes.

“Gene editing is a fabulous technology that I think will ultimately help many, many people around the world,” she said. “And so for me it’s more about management.”

Over the past year, some of the most important CRISPR labs, including that in Doudna, have turned their attention to another scientific holy grail: protecting us from COVID, starting with work on a cheap, fast, and home.

Doudna said: “I imagine having small devices based on CRISPR so that people can come to work, spit in a tube and get a response in 30 minutes, telling them whether they need to be quarantined or not.”

In the meantime, scientists around the world are exploring the amazing potential of CRISPR to improve our lives.

Pogue asked Isaacson: “Do you think the biotech revolution will have as big a scope and impact as the digital revolution was?”

“I think the biotechnology revolution is going to be 10 times After important than the digital revolution, because it allows us to hack the code of life, “he replied.” And we should not be afraid to use this technology to be healthier.

READ AN EXTRACT FROM A BOOK: “The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson

For more information:

• “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster), in hardcover, eBook and audio formats, available through Amazon and Indiebound
• Walter Isaacson, Tulane University
• Doudna Lab, Berkeley, California.
• Innovative Genomics Institute, Berkeley, California.
• CRISPR Therapeutics, Cambridge, Mass.
• Sarah Cannon, Nashville, Tennessee.

Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Publisher: Steven Tyler.

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