Commentary on Jennifer Doudna's Overall Body of Work

    When you look at Jennifer Doudna’s body of work it almost seems as if she was working towards the discovery of CRISPR for her entire professional career, without even realizing it. By analyzing her work and the contributions she made you can see how she slowly climbed the social ladder and was catapulted into the field of CRISPR right at its infancy. Often with science making a discovery can be a matter of merely being at the right place at the right time and I think that Doudna’s entry into the CRISPR field is an example of this. However, it is also important in science to not solely rely on that but to seek discovery, ask questions, and not always follow the herd but go where you see the brink of discovery. This is what Doudna has consistently done throughout her career and is what led her into researching RNA interference, which is what led her into CRISPR research. 
    Doudna also knew the importance of surrounding herself with the right people and cultivating a lab environment with people that worked together effectively. This was extremely important as is evident in all of the research papers that came out of her lab where you can clearly see the influence of every person who worked on the research. It shows how much of a team effort scientific discoveries really are, contrary to many people's belief when they try to connect a major scientific breakthrough with just one scientist. Doudna’s contributions to CRISPR are not negligible, however, and in 2020 Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery. CRISPR is a major advancement in biotechnology that I think will take time to be utilized to its full potential and will have to walk the fine thread between ethical and unethical, but I am nonetheless excited to see where it will go.

Emmanuelle Charpentier (left) and Jennifer Doudna (right) winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Jamie Cate, husband of Jennifer Doudna (left) with their son, Andy Cate (right) during Doudna's news conference about the Nobel Prize

Sources:

1. https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/10/07/jennifer-doudna-wins-2020-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/
2. ​https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/opinion/nobel-prize-chemistry-2020-doudna-charpentier.html