

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. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.ĭriven 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. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Get a copy of this summary and learn about the book.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. However, it has one more oxygen molecule in its sugar-phosphate spine and a distinction in one of its four bases. "RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a particle in living cells that is like DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Take this model almost immediately in the book when Isaacson clarifies the distinction between the two: These potentials and extensive results of quality-altering innovation are topics going through Walter Isaacson's new bookĬoming in at almost 500 pages, the book jumps into the substance of life and the powerful universe of genomes and hereditary coding, or what Isaacson calls "the third extraordinary upheaval of present-day times," following the article, and the piece which prompted the advanced unrest.įor the unenlightened - those people who can't tell their DNAs from RNAs - understanding this new wilderness in science can be somewhat overwhelming. He lost his employment and was sentenced to three years in jail.


The declaration of genetically altered children was met with awfulness and shock, especially in mainstream researchers. Their introduction to the world probably would have gone undetected outside of the family aside from one factor: They were the world's first genetically altered infants.Ī Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, altered their genes apparently with an end goal to shield them from being tainted with the HIV infection, utilizing a gene editing tool called CRISPR. Toward the beginning of November 2018, twin girls - Humdinger and Nana - were born by caesarian section in a Chinese emergency clinic. This blockbuster book sees Nobel-winning organic chemist Jennifer Doudna through a wonderful magnifying lens.
