Her experiments gave her a glimpse of how basic science can be turned into applied science. Yeast cells are very efficient at taking up pieces of DNA and integrating them into their genetic makeup. So she worked on a way to make use of this fact. She engineered strands of DNA that ended with a sequence that matched a sequence in the yeast. With a little electric shock, she opened up tiny passageways in the cell wall of the yeast, allowing the DNA that she made to wriggle inside. It then recombined into the yeast’s DNA. She had made a tool that could edit the genes of yeast.
