Jennifer Doudna

Nobel Laureate for CRISPR Gene Editing

Jennifer Doudna, 60, is a Berkeley biochemist and recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technology. To create CRISPR, Doudna and co-Nobelist Emmanuelle Charpentier adapted a natural process from the immune system of bacteria. Bacteria are able to fight off invading viruses by snipping viral DNA with a kind of genetic scissors. Doudna and Charpentier commandeered these molecular scissors to be able to cut DNA sequences of any organism–human, plant, virus–at any specified points, removing a targeted gene and, when desired, replacing it with another.