The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs
returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer
Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to
cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix
on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective
tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered
she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became
enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the
code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls
didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
Driven by a
passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into
inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson,
told her was the most important biological advance since his
co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a
curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human
race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a
brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
The
development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus
will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The
past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip,
computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution.
Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study
genetic code.
Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to
make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would
be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents,
if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their
kids?
After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader
in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator
Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a
thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of
nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
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