Doudna’s work during this time consists of her very preliminary contributions to the field of CRISPR technologies. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how her research fits into the greater picture of CRISPR but within her journey these early days of studying Cas proteins and being introduced to the field, are vital. These beginnings are what would eventually lead to her work on the single guide RNA, sgRNA. However, it’s important to also look at the contributions of other scientists as the discovery of CRISPR really can’t be associated with one or two scientists. It was a series of discoveries over time that made it up, and the debate over who made the largest discoveries in relation to CRISPR is still ongoing and very heated. As noted in the previous post, Francisco Mojica was one of the very first scientists who is credited with making discoveries about CRISPR, and even for helping design the name. Around the same time that Doudna was working on her CRISPR discoveries two men, Rodolphe Barrangou and Philippe Horvath began doing some research for Danisco, a Danish food ingredient company that made starter cultures for the fermentation of dairy products. They discovered that they could engineer virus immunity in the bacteria used for the starter cultures. The discovery was published in Science magazine and attracted significant attention to the field and led to the first CRISPR conference in July of 2008 at Berkeley’s Stanley Hall. Only 35 people attended, including Francisco Mojica, but it was an important step in encouraging discussion and sharing ideas about the growing field. The conference introduced many to the work of Luciano Marraffini and Erik Sontheimer. Together they had discovered that CRISPR did not work through RNA interference, which was contrary to the common belief at the time, but rather that it interacted with the virus’s DNA. From this data, Horvath and Barrangou predicted that CRISPR technology could be used for gene editing depending on how exactly it interacted with DNA. They attempted to patent CRISPR as a DNA-editing tool but were unsuccessful because, although their predictions would be proven to be correct, they could not prove them at the time. All of this to say that while Doudna was present for many of the big discoveries being made at this time in the history of CRISPR her research had not quite made the splash that it would make later. However, I believe that the focus should not be placed on one or two scientists at all, Doudna included. The discovery of CRISPR, much like other scientific discoveries before it, was a team effort and required many people to build off of each other’s findings and accomplishments to achieve.
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AuthorMy name is Nathan Eberhart. I have a curious mind and am a creative thinker with an interest in biomedical engineering and medical devices. Archives
January 2022
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