A Crack in Creation Quotes

“I was interested in scientific communication, in truth I much preferred working in the lab and trying new experiments to thinking about the theoretical, long-term implications of my research and trying to explain them to nonscientists.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“the first monkeys were born with genomes that had been rewritten through precision gene editing, bringing the steady march of CRISPR research right to Homo sapiens’ evolutionary front door.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Then, too, while gene editing is capable of repairing DNA in cultured human cells, it will be years before its efficacy is (or is not) demonstrated in human patients, and the few clinical successes that have been achieved so far with cancer immunotherapy and HIV might or might not be accurate predictors of other successes to come.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Clinical trials are currently under way to test this mode of cell transfer, and a moving story from late 2015 hints at its amazing potential. In fact, the subject of this story, Layla Richards, is the first human whose life was saved by therapeutic gene editing.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“The potential utility of therapeutic gene editing goes far beyond simply reverting mutated genes back to their healthy states. Some scientists are employing CRISPR in human cells to block viral infections, just like this molecular defense system naturally evolved to do in bacteria. In fact, the first clinical trials to use gene editing are aimed at curing HIV/AIDS by editing a patient’s own immune cells so the virus can’t penetrate them. And in another landmark effort, the first human life was saved by gene editing in combination with another emerging breakthrough in medicine: cancer immunotherapy, in which the body’s own immune system is trained to hunt down and kill cancerous cells.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“The mosquito causes more human suffering than any other creature on earth. Mosquito-borne diseases—malaria, dengue virus, West Nile virus, yellow fever virus, Chikungunya virus, Zika virus, and many others—have an annual death toll in excess of one million.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“It amazes me to realize that we are on the cusp of a new era in the history of life on earth—an age in which humans exercise an unprecedented level of control over the genetic composition of the species that co-inhabit our planet. It won’t be long before CRISPR allows us to bend nature to our will in the way that humans have dreamed of since prehistory.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Like a strand of DNA, the mRNA is a chain of letters, and its sequence matches the sequence of the DNA it copied (the only major exception being that T gets replaced by U). The mRNA is exported out of the cell’s nucleus and delivered to a protein-synthesizing factory called a ribosome, which translates the four-letter language of RNA (A, G, C, and U) into the twenty-letter language of proteins (the twenty amino acids). This translation proceeds according to the genetic code, a cipher in which every three-letter RNA combination, called a codon, instructs the ribosome to add one specific amino acid.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“that it was fantastically easy to target specific genes. All you had to do was select the desired twenty-letter DNA sequence to edit and then convert that sequence into a matching twenty-letter code of RNA. Once inside the cell, the RNA would couple with its DNA match using base pairing, and Cas9 would slice apart the DNA.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Academics and physicians alike were hailing CRISPR as the holy grail of gene manipulation: a quick, easy, and accurate way to fix defects in genetic code.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“had constructed and validated a new technology that, based on the body of research conducted with ZFN and TALEN proteins, would be capable of editing the genome—any genome, not just one belonging to a bacterial”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Among the diseases that can be chalked up to S. pyogenes are toxic shock syndrome, scarlet fever, strep throat, and a particularly scary one called necrotizing fasciitis, which has earned S. pyogenes the unpleasant epithet of “flesh-eating bacteria.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Humans ingest well over a billion trillion live S. thermophilus cells a year, and the annual market value of cultures of the bacterium is more than forty billion dollars. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this massive investment by the dairy industry is under constant threat from phage infection,”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“in the ocean alone, about 40 percent of all bacteria die every day as a result of deadly phage infections.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“The fact that genetic code exists in triplets, with three letters of DNA specifying each amino acid of a protein,”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Every person experiences roughly one million mutations throughout the body per second,18 and in a rapidly proliferating organ like the intestinal epithelium, nearly every single letter of the genome will have been mutated at least once in at least one cell by the time an individual turns sixty.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

“Fly genomes contain around 14,000 genes spread out across hundreds of millions of DNA base pairs. The human genome comprises about 3.2 billion letters of DNA,”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“Will focusing on de-extinction and designer pets distract us from protecting existing endangered species or mistreated and neglected companion animals?”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

“Labradors are prone to some thirty genetic conditions, 60 percent of golden retrievers succumb to cancer, beagles are commonly afflicted with epilepsy, and Cavalier King Charles spaniels suffer from seizures and persistent pain due to their deformed skulls.66 These poignant medical problems haven’t kept humans from letting tastes dictate the genotype and phenotype of humankind’s best friend.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

“an anticoagulant called antithrombin, and it is secreted in the milk of genetically modified goats. Another approved drug is isolated from the milk of transgenic rabbits, and in 2015, the FDA gave the go-ahead for a protein-based drug that is purified from the egg whites of transgenic chickens.56”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

“The human genome also includes a separate mini-chromosome—just sixteen thousand letters of DNA—located in mitochondria, the energy-producing batteries of the cell. Unlike the genetic code found in other chromosomes, mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

“every single CRISPR region had expanded to include a new snippet of DNA spliced between the repeats. Furthermore, these new spacers perfectly matched the DNA of the phage to which that strain was now immune.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“This book is its story, and mine. It is also yours. Because it won’t be long before the repercussions from this technology reach your doorstep too.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack In Creation: A Nobel Prize Winner's Insight into the Future of Genetic Engineering

“It’s not that I was categorically opposed to the idea of scientists and physicians using gene editing to introduce heritable changes into the human genome.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“PGD has also been used for other controversial purposes, such as the birth if so-called savior siblings, destined from the moment of implantation not only to live their own lives, but also to serve as organ or cell donors for a sibling.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“improving on the natural course if evolution—which, attendees argued, could be so cruel as to justify some sort of intervention.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“Editas Medicine has an exclusive multimillion-dollar license with Juno Therapeutics to develop T cell therapies”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“we founded Editas Medicine with $43 million in financing from three venture capital firms.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“in 2011, Rachel and I founded a company called Caribou Biosciences to commercialize the Cas proteins.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

“As we began discussing authorship of a white paper summarizing our conclusions, we debated who our target audience should be and what kind of outcome we were hoping to achieve.”
― Jennifer A. Doudna, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution