The code breaker : Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race / Walter Isaacson

Index included

Introduction. Into the breach -- Part one. The origins of life. Hilo ; The gene ; DNA ; The education of a biochemist ; The human genome ; RNA ; Twists and folds ; Berkeley -- Part two. CRISPR. Clustered repeats ; The Free Speech Movement Café ; Jumping in ; The yogurt makers ; Genentech ; The lab ; Caribou ; Emmanuelle Charpentier ; CRISPR-Cas9 ; Science, 2012 ; Dueling presentations -- Part three. Gene editing. A human tool ; The race ; Feng Zhang ; George Church ; Zhang tackles CRISPR ; Doudna joins the race ; Photo finish ; Doudna's final sprint ; Forming companies ; Mon amie ; The heroes of CRISPR ; Patents -- Part four. CRISPR in action. Therapies ; Biohacking ; DARPA and anti-CRISPR -- Part five. Public scientist. Rules of the road ; Doudna steps in -- Part six. CRISPR babies. He Jiankui ; The Hong Kong summit ; Acceptance -- Part seven. The moral questions. Red lines ; Thought experiments ; Who should decide? ; Doudna's ethical journey -- Part eight. Dispatches from the front. Quebec ; I learn to edit ; Watson revisited ; Doudna pays a visit -- Part nine. Coronavirus. Call to arms ; Testing ; The Berkeley lab ; Mammoth and Sherlock ; Coronavirus tests ; Vaccines ; CRISPR cures ; Cold Spring Harbor virtual ; The Nobel Prize -- Epilogue.

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 building blocks 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 codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned their curiosity 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 COVID-19 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 the code of life.

English