Jennifer Doudna facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jennifer Doudna
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Doudna in 2023
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| Born |
Jennifer Anne Doudna
February 19, 1964 Washington, D.C., U.S.
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| Education |
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| Spouse(s) |
Tom Griffin
(m. 1988, divorced)Jamie Cate
(m. 2000) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
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| Thesis | Towards the Design of an RNA Replicase (1989) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jack Szostak |
| Other academic advisors | Thomas Cech |
| Doctoral students |
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Jennifer Anne Doudna (born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist. She is famous for her groundbreaking work in CRISPR gene editing. This amazing technology allows scientists to make precise changes to DNA. She also made other important discoveries in biochemistry and genetics.
In 2020, Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier. They received the award for creating a way to edit genomes. A genome is all the genetic information in an organism. Doudna is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also been a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.
In 2012, Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier suggested that a system from bacteria, called CRISPR-Cas9, could be used to edit genes. This discovery is considered one of the most important in the history of biology. Since then, Doudna has been a key leader in the "CRISPR revolution." She has helped develop and improve CRISPR-mediated genome editing.
Doudna has received many awards. These include the 2000 Alan T. Waterman Award for her research on ribozymes. She also received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, shared with Charpentier. She was named one of the Time magazine's most influential people in 2015. In 2023, she joined the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Jennifer Doudna was born on February 19, 1964, in Washington, D.C. Her father had a PhD in English literature. Her mother had two master's degrees, one in education and one in Asian history. When Jennifer was seven, her family moved to Hawaii. Her father became a teacher at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her mother taught history at a local college.
Growing up in Hilo, Hawaii, Jennifer loved the nature around her. She was curious about how living things worked. Her parents also encouraged her to be curious. Her father enjoyed reading science books and filled their home with them. When Jennifer was in sixth grade, her father gave her a book called The Double Helix by James Watson. This book, about the discovery of DNA's structure, greatly inspired her.
Jennifer also loved science and math at school. Even though some people told her that "Women don't go into science," she knew she wanted to be a scientist. She said that when someone told her she couldn't do something, it only made her more determined.
At Hilo High School, her chemistry teacher, Jeanette Wong, helped her interest in science grow. A speaker who talked about cancer cells also encouraged her. She spent a summer working in a lab at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She graduated from high school in 1981.
Doudna then went to Pomona College in California. She studied biochemistry there. At first, she wondered if she was good enough for science. She even thought about changing her major to French. But her French teacher told her to stick with science. Her chemistry professors, Fred Grieman and Corwin Hansch, were also very important to her. She started her first research in professor Sharon Panasenko's lab. She earned her bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1985.
She then went to Harvard Medical School for her PhD. She earned her PhD in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in 1989. Her PhD research was about a system that made a self-copying RNA more efficient. Her advisor was Jack W. Szostak.
Career and Research
After her PhD, Jennifer Doudna worked as a research fellow. She studied molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also studied genetics at Harvard Medical School. From 1991 to 1994, she worked with Thomas Cech at the University of Colorado Boulder. As of 2022, Doudna is a highly cited scientist.
Understanding RNA Enzymes
Early in her career, Doudna worked to understand RNA enzymes, also called ribozymes. While in Szostak's lab, she changed a ribozyme to make it copy RNA templates. She wanted to understand how these enzymes worked. But she realized it was hard to study them without seeing their molecular structure.
So, Doudna went to Thomas Cech's lab. Her goal was to be the first to find the three-dimensional structure of a ribozyme. This would allow scientists to compare ribozymes to Enzymes, which are protein catalysts. She started this project in 1991 and finished it at Yale University in 1996. Doudna became an assistant professor at Yale in 1994.
At Yale, Doudna's team used X-ray diffraction to find the 3D structure of a ribozyme. They showed that five magnesium ions formed a core in the ribozyme. This core helped the rest of the structure fold correctly. This is similar to how proteins fold. Her group also found the structures of other ribozymes, like the HDV ribozyme. This work helped scientists understand how large RNA structures work.
Doudna became a full professor at Yale in 2000. She was also a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2000–2001.
Moving to Berkeley
In 2002, Doudna moved to the University of California, Berkeley. She became a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. At Berkeley, she could use the powerful synchrotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This helped her with her X-ray experiments.
In 2009, she briefly worked at Genentech, a biotech company. But she soon returned to Berkeley. She decided to focus all her efforts on studying CRISPR.
Today, Doudna is still at the University of California, Berkeley. She leads the Innovative Genomics Institute. This institute works to develop gene editing technology. They use it to solve big problems in health, farming, and climate change. Her lab now studies how CRISPR-Cas systems work. They also create new ways to edit genes and deliver CRISPR treatments.
CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing Discovery
Doudna learned about CRISPR in 2006 from Jillian Banfield. In 2012, Doudna and her team made a huge discovery. They found a way to make editing DNA much faster and easier. Their discovery uses a protein called Cas9. This protein comes from the "CRISPR" immune system of Streptococcus bacteria. Cas9 works like tiny scissors. It teams up with a guide RNA to cut the DNA of viruses. This stops the viruses from infecting the bacteria.
Scientists had known about this bacterial system since 1987. But Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were the first to show that they could program it. They could use different RNAs to tell Cas9 where to cut and edit different DNA sequences.
This new CRISPR system made editing DNA much simpler. Many research groups quickly started using it. They used it for basic cell biology, plant and animal research. They also used it to develop treatments for diseases. These include sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and HIV.
Doudna and other leading biologists have called for careful thought about using CRISPR. They want to make sure it's used ethically. Doudna supports using CRISPR to edit body cells (somatic gene editing). These changes do not pass on to future generations. However, she does not support editing germline cells, which would pass changes to future generations.
The discovery of CRISPR led to a race to get patents for the technology. Doudna and UC Berkeley applied for a patent. Another group at the Broad Institute also applied. This group, led by Feng Zhang, had shown that CRISPR-Cas9 could edit human cells. There were legal disagreements over who deserved the patent. In the end, both groups received patents for different aspects of the technology.
Doudna helped start several companies to use CRISPR technology. These include Caribou Biosciences in 2011. She also co-founded Intellia Therapeutics and Scribe Therapeutics. Scribe Therapeutics developed a new, smaller version of Cas9 called CasX.
In 2017, Doudna co-wrote a book for the public called A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. This book shares her personal story of this major scientific breakthrough.
Besides CRISPR, Doudna also found that the hepatitis C virus uses a special way to make its proteins. This discovery could lead to new medicines to stop infections.
Doudna is very hopeful about CRISPR. She believes it can help cure genetic diseases and improve farming. But she also wants to make sure the benefits reach everyone who needs them.
Mammoth Biosciences
In 2017, Doudna co-founded Mammoth Biosciences. This company is based in San Francisco. It focuses on making biosensing tests easier to access. These tests can help with challenges in healthcare, farming, and monitoring the environment.
Other Activities
Jennifer Doudna is also the founder and chair of the Innovative Genomics Institute. She helped start this institute in 2014. She is also a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes. She is also a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Doudna is an advisor for several companies she co-founded, like Caribou and Intellia. She also advises other companies and organizations. In 2022, she joined Sixth Street Partners as their chief science advisor. She helps guide their investments related to CRISPR.
Personal Life
Jennifer Doudna married Tom Griffin in 1988. He was a fellow student at Harvard. They divorced a few years later. Later, Doudna met Jamie Cate when she was a postdoctoral researcher. They worked together on a project to find the structure of a ribozyme.
Doudna and Cate married in Hawaii in 2000. Cate became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Doudna followed him to Harvard. But in 2002, they both became professors at Berkeley and moved there. Cate liked the less formal environment on the West Coast. Doudna liked that Berkeley is a public university. Cate is a professor at Berkeley. He works on editing yeast to make more fuel from plants. Doudna and Cate have a son, born in 2002. He studies electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. They live in Berkeley.
Awards and Honors
Doudna has received many important awards. In 2000, she won the Alan T. Waterman Award. This is the National Science Foundation's highest honor for young researchers. She received it for finding the structure of a ribozyme. In 2001, she received the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.
In 2015, she and Emmanuelle Charpentier received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. This was for their work on CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. In 2016, she received the Canada Gairdner International Award with Charpentier and others. She also won the Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics in 2016. Other awards include the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2015), the Tang Prize (2016), and the Japan Prize (2017).
In 2018, Doudna received the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience. She shared this with Emmanuelle Charpentier and Virginijus Šikšnys. In 2020, she received the Wolf Prize in Medicine with Charpentier. Also in 2020, Doudna and Charpentier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This was for their work on gene editing.
She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. She also became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. In 2016, she became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. In 2021, Pope Francis named Doudna, along with two other women Nobel laureates, as members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Doudna and Charpentier were named among the Time magazine's most influential people in 2015. Doudna was also a runner-up for Time Person of the Year in 2016. She has received honorary degrees from USC and Harvard.
See also
In Spanish: Jennifer Doudna para niños
