When Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year, there was no black ribbon ceremony in Sweden. Due to the pandemic, he picked up the medal in the back garden.
Correspondent David Pogue asked Doudna, “Let’s move on to what’s really important: where do you keep your Nobel?”
“Well, the truth is, I have the replica in my house, just a small frame, and I have the actual medal stored in a safe,” he 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 that is often described in words as “miraculous”: the gene editing technique known as CRISPR, and the acronym for Short, regularly interspersed palindromic repetitions.
Pogue asked, “How is it 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’d see a tube of colorless liquid,” Doudna said.
Two tubes, actually. The first contains molecules designed to bind to a specific gene in the cells of a living thing: a specific part of its DNA. The proteins in the other liquid cut the DNA at that point. “It’s like a zip code that you can go to to find a specific place in a cell’s DNA and literally, like scissors, make a fragment,” Doudna said.
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Cut DNA like this normally deactivate a gen. We can deactivate a gene that gives us a disease or turn off the gene that limits the amount of skin that cashmere boxes drop or the amount of muscle that a beagle grows.
The next step is much more difficult: changing a file different DNA sequence, replacing it with something we have created ourselves. We can rewrite the genes of any plant, animal or person.
Walter Isaacson is the author of best-selling books on Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein i Steve Jobs. Her latest “The Code Breaker” (published by Simon & Schuster, which is part of ViacomCBS), is about Jennifer Doudna and her work at CRISPR. “When I started this book, I thought,‘ Okay, biotechnology and CRISPR, it’s the most amazing thing that happens in our time, ’” Isaacson said. “And then I realized that in the end it was. discreet the case.”
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Since Doudna published her article in 2012, there have been many things in CRISPR labs around the world. Scientists have raised more nutritious tomatoes and created gluten-free wheat. Clinical trials are being conducted to treat some cancers using CRISPR techniques.
These medical treatments show the most dropped possibilities of CRISPR. About 7,000 human diseases are caused by gene mutations that, in theory, we can simply uproot. They include muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, and sickle cell disease, a blood disorder that causes debilitating pain, infections, and premature death. It affects about 100,000 Americans, including Victoria Gray, a mother of four Mississippi children who became the first American to be treated with genes set by CRISPR.
In the year since he received the experimental treatment, he has not suffered any pain or hospitalization.
Of course, like any revolutionary technology, this one has a dark side, with predictions of remodeled humans. Pogue asked Doudna, “The headlines always talk about,‘ Oh, what you’ve unleashed are designer babies! “Like, people will say, ‘I want blond, blue hair, super smart, super muscular.’ Is it real?”
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“Well, yes and no. Especially not,” Doudna replied. “We really don’t know what genes should be edited for the types of traits you mentioned. And I suspect we’re talking about dozens, if not more, of genes that would need to be modified. To do so would be technically. So I don’t think we are on the brink of a world of CRISPR babies.
“But it’s close enough, in the sense that technology could fundamentally allow for that, that I think it’s critical that we have a discussion about it.”
Isaacson said: “Most people who have studied this say you have to draw a line between what is medically necessary, that is, trying to make sure people don’t have sickle cell or Huntington’s anemia, but it’s a blurred line. I mean, if you try to improve someone’s memory to make sure they don’t have Alzheimer’s, you’ll improve their memory as well. ”
There is also a difference between editing a person’s genes, such as Victoria Gray, and making changes that will be passed on to their children.
In 2018, a Chinese doctor edited the embryos of three Chinese babies so that they and their descendants would be resistant to the HIV virus. Scientists around the world condemned him for being a scoundrel.
“In China at first, for about a day, he was celebrated as the first person to create designer babies,” Isaacson said. “But even the Chinese were dismayed by what he did and were eventually tried and placed under house arrest.”
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Since that event, Doudna has been organizing a series of international conferences designed to develop ethical guidelines for using CRISPR, so that there are prior agreements before a disaster occurs.
“Gene editing is a fabulous technology that I think will ultimately help many, many people around the world,” he said. “And for me, it’s more about managing it.”
Over the past year, some of the most prominent CRISPR labs, including Doudna’s, have focused their attention on a different scientific Holy Grail: Protecting Us from COVID, starting with working on a COVID test at home, fast and quick.
Doudna said: “I imagine having small CRISPR-based devices so people can come to work, spit in a tube and in 30 minutes get an answer, telling them whether they should be quarantined or not.”
Meanwhile, 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 great a scope and impact as the digital revolution?”
“I think the biotech revolution will be ten times over month “It’s important that the digital revolution, because it allows us to hack the code of life,” he replied. “And we shouldn’t be afraid to use this technology to make ourselves healthier.”
READ A BOOK EXCERPT: “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, e-book, and audio format, available via Amazon and Indiebound
- Walter Isaacson, Tulane University
- Doudna Lab, Berkeley, California.
- Innovative Genomics Institute, Berkeley, California.
- CRISPR Therapeutics, Cambridge, Mass.
- Sarah Cannon, Nashville, Tenn.
Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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