Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take the most
complex research articles and scientific profiles
and really distill the knowledge you need to
be well -informed. And today we are wrestling
with a topic that, well, it sounds like something
straight out of science fiction. It really does.
We're talking about the ability to precisely
edit the foundational code of life. I mean, rewriting
the very blueprints of existence in any organism
on Earth. It's a monumental shift. You know,
for decades, science was all about reading the
genome. Now we have the ability to go in and
write new sections, correct errors, even delete
entire passages. And the figure right at the
center of this revolution is Jennifer Doudna.
Her journey is just as fascinating as the technology
she helped create. Absolutely. So our deep dive
today is built around a really comprehensive
look at Doudna's career. And we're not just focusing
on the 2020 Nobel Prize she won for CRISPR -Cas9
genome editing. No, we have to go back further.
We're going all the way back to her origins,
this inquisitive kid in Hawaii, the structural
biologist obsessed with complex RNA shapes to
really understand. the often overlooked foundational
work that made all of this possible. Our mission
for you, the listener, is really to connect the
dots. You need to understand the molecular mechanics
of how this technology works, the high -stakes
legal battles over its ownership, and the ambitious
ethical framework Doudna is building to ensure
this powerful tool is used responsibly. We're
tracing a whole scientific lifetime from the
lab bench to the Nobel stage and way beyond.
Our goal is to make sure you walk away understanding
not just the what of CRISPR, but the deeper how
and why it matters for all of us. So let's get
started. Let's unpack this journey, starting
with her earliest inspirations. You know, it's
so important to start with the environment that
shaped her curiosity. Doudna was born in Washington,
D .C., but her formative years, they really began
when her family moved to Hulo, Hawaii. She was
seven years old. And Hilo is such a specific,
vibrant place. You can't live there without being
just immersed in this unique, lush biodiversity.
Exactly. The source material really highlights
that this upbringing fostered a deep intrinsic
fascination with the local flora and fauna. I
mean, it's hard to imagine a better incubator
for someone who would dedicate her life to understanding
the mechanisms of biological systems. And her
parents were a huge intellectual influence. Her
father had a Ph .D. in English literature and
her mother, who taught history, held two master's
degrees. So the home environment was clearly
one that valued learning and, you know, intellectual
pursuit. But the real spark, the defining moment
that came in the sixth grade. Right. This is
the moment that's almost legendary in scientific
biographies now. It's when her father handed
her a copy of James Watson's 1968 book, The Double
Helix. A powerful gift. I mean, that book, which
recounts the thrilling, sometimes messy discovery
of the structure of DNA. It was a profound inspiration
for her. It introduced her to the idea that life
itself could be understood through molecular
structure, that there was a blueprint. And it's
incredible to think of a sixth grader being captivated
by that, by the molecular structure of existence.
And that seed of curiosity was then nurtured
by some really excellent mentorship. Her 10th
grade chemistry teacher at Hilo High School,
a woman named Jeanette Wong, is cited as a major
influence. Right. She transformed that nascent
interest into a really focused curiosity. We
can't overlook the power of those early teachers.
There was also an encouraging lecture on cancer
cells that sort of reinforced her career path.
But even with all of this early momentum, her
confidence wavered when she got to Pomona College
to study biochemistry. A completely relatable
moment of doubt, right? Totally. Our sources
reveal that during her freshman year, Doudna
actually considered dropping science entirely.
She wanted to switch her major to French. She
felt overwhelmed by the difficulty of the general
chemistry classes. But here's the twist. It was
her French teacher who encouraged her to stick
with science. It's a remarkable little historical
footnote, isn't it? A single conversation that
may have prevented a Nobel Prize winning scientist
from changing fields entirely. So she overcame
that self -doubt and graduated with her Bachelor
of Arts in Biochemistry in 1985. From there,
the specialization really begins. She chose Harvard
Medical School for her doctoral studies, completing
her PhD in Biological Chemistry and Molecular
Pharmacology in 1989. And she was working under
the renowned Jack Sostak. Yes. And this is where
her focus on nucleic acids truly locks in, but
in a very, very specific way. Her dissertation
wasn't just about DNA or RNA as, you know, information
storage. It was focused on increasing the efficiency
of a self -replicating catalytic RNA. That distinction
catalytic RNA is so key to understanding her
entire career trajectory. It's everything. For
our listeners who might be familiar with basic
biology, we typically think of RNA as a messenger,
right? It carries instructions from DNA to the
protein -making machinery. And we think of proteins
as the workers, the enzymes, that perform all
the actual labor like catalyzing chemical reactions.
Exactly. But Donau was focused on ribozymes.
Right. RNA molecules that act as enzymes themselves,
performing catalytic work. Her early dedication
was to understanding RNA not just as a passive
instruction manual, but as an active 3D functional
machine. So this intellectual foundation is really
the unheralded precursor to the CRISPR breakthrough
years later. It absolutely is. She was already
treating RNA as a potential tool long before
Cass and I ever came along. That sets us up perfectly
for the next phase of her career. She knew RNA
could perform this complex work, but she needed
to figure out how. How was it structured to do
that work? So when Doudna began her postdoctoral
work, the fundamental challenge facing her and
really the entire molecular biology community
was visualization. Right. These complex RNA enzymes,
these ribozymes, and scientists could measure
their catalytic activity, see what they did,
but they couldn't see their internal mechanics.
She realized she couldn't fully understand the
function without actually seeing their three
-dimensional structure. It's like trying to understand
how a watch works just by listening to it tick.
That's a great analogy. Yeah. have to open the
case. And this challenge led her to the lab of
Thomas Scheck at the University of Colorado Boulder
starting in 1991. And Scheck himself was a Nobel
laureate for identifying catalytic RNA in the
first place, so she was going to the source.
And her goal was monumental, to crystallize and
determine the 3D structure of a ribozyme for
the first time. So why was solving the structure
of a ribozyme so crucial? Why spend years on
this painstaking, difficult work? It was crucial
to answer a really deep biological question.
How similar or different are RNA -based catalysts
to protein -based catalysts? Okay. I mean, if
RNA performed the same duties as proteins, scientists
needed to see how it folded and how it achieved
chemical specificity. We needed to know if nature
had evolved completely distinct structural rules
for the two types of biological workers. And
the technique you have to use to see these molecules
is notoriously difficult, right? Roman, X -ray
crystallography. Can you just give us a conceptual
idea of how that process works? I can try. X
-ray crystallography is essentially molecular
photography. But instead of using visible light,
you use X -rays. And first, you have to coax
the molecule, in this case, a complex floppy
RNA strand, to arrange itself into a highly ordered
three -dimensional crystal. Which sounds... It's
incredibly difficult. That process alone can
take months or even years, especially for RNA,
because it's often much more flexible than the
rigid, well -behaved protein molecules scientists
were used to working with. So once you have a
crystal, if you can get one... If you get one,
you bombard it with high -powered X -rays. As
the X -rays pass through, they diffract or scatter
off the atoms in the crystal. You capture the
resulting pattern of dots on a detector and then...
Then you use complex mathematical algorithms
to reverse engineer the exact location of every
single atom in that molecule. So it's a process
that requires massive computational power and
critically, extremely bright X -ray beams. Yes,
which is why the move she made later in her career
was so strategic. But the initial breakthrough,
that happened at Yale. She established her first
independent lab there, running from 1994 to 1996.
This is the quiet foundational moment, right?
The work that doesn't get the headlines but earned
her scientific credentials. Precisely. Her team
succeeded in solving the 3D structure of the
catalytic core of the tetrahymena group R -rebozyme.
This structure was the first complete blueprint
of a major RNA enzyme. And this is where we need
to dive into the specific molecular nugget that,
you know, fundamentally changed the field. What
did they actually find inside this complex RNA
fold? What they found was a highly ordered specific
cluster of five magnesium ions, and they were
tucked deep inside the core of the molecule.
Magnesium ions? Yeah. These magnesium ions were
located within a specific domain of the ribozyme
structure, and they were indispensable for the
overall folding and stability of the molecule.
Wait a minute. We always hear about the hydrophobic
core being crucial for protein folding. Proteins
achieve stability by burying water -repelling
amino acids in their center, isn't that right?
That's the traditional rule for proteins, yes.
That's how they stabilize their complex shapes.
But Doudna's team showed that this cluster of
five magnesium ions was performing an analogous
role for RNA. How so? Well, these positively
charged metal ions organize the negatively charged
phosphate backbone of the RNA, effectively allowing
the molecule to fold into this complex, stable
3D shape. So RNA uses ions in organic chemistry
to create a core that functions structurally,
like the organic hydrophobic cores of proteins.
It's a completely different chemical trick to
achieve the same sophisticated architecture.
Wow. It showed that RNA has its own intricate,
specific rules for self -assembly and catalysis.
It's distinct from proteins, but equally capable
of achieving complex functional folding. This
wasn't just a pretty picture. It was a realization
that RNA was a powerful, independent architect
of life. And this success immediately established
her expertise in structural biology. It did.
It led to further work on other critical ribozymes,
like the hepatitis delta virus ribozyme, and
larger complexes such as the signal recumission
particle. So her need for even higher resolution
imagery and more intense X -ray beams prompted
her move. Exactly. In 2002, she joined UC Berkeley,
gaining access to the powerful synchrotron at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This was
a critical step. A synchrotron is essentially
a massive particle accelerator that creates X
-rays bright enough to produce the high resolution
diffraction patterns needed to map these incredibly
dense structures. So by 2006, when the CRISPR
story really starts, she isn't just a smart scientist.
She's one of the world's foremost experts in
understanding the 3D. structure, folding and
function of complex nucleic acids. She had the
exact toolkit required for the next massive leap.
The transition from structural biology to genome
editing, it started not with an epiphany in a
dark room or a crystallography lab, but with
a surprisingly modern tool. A Google search.
I still love that detail. In 2006, Jillian Banfield,
a Berkeley colleague studying microbial genomics,
was looking for someone who understood RNA interference,
RNAi, to help interpret these mysterious repeating
DNA sequences she kept finding in bacteria. So
she literally searched RNAi in UC Berkeley. And
dude, nah. because of her extensive work on RNA
structure, came up right at the top of the list.
It just shows the sheer weight of Doudna's prior
work. That initial contact led to Doudna investigating
this unusual system, CRISPR. Right. CRISPR stands
for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic
Repeats, which is a mouthful. A total mouthful.
At the time, it was just a genomic curiosity.
And it was known that the sequences acted as
a kind of bacterial immune system. When a bacterium
survived a viral attack, it would snip a piece
of the viral DNA and store it in its own genome,
right between those short repeating sequences.
It was like a molecular mugshot database. That's
the perfect way to describe it. The system itself
was first noted by Yoshizumi Ishino way back
in 1987, but Francisco Mojica later characterized
it, suggesting it was an immune system. They
basically discovered the lockbox. But the key
was missing. The key was missing. And the breakthrough
that unlocked the whole thing happened in collaboration
with Emmanuel Charpentier, a Swedish microbiologist
dude that met at a conference in 2011. Their
core realization, published in 2012, was that
this microbial immunity system, which uses the
Cas9 protein as a molecular scissor, could be
simplified and repurposed. They showed it was
a universal... programmable editing tool. Okay,
let's break down the mechanics because this is
the core of the invention. In nature, the Cas9
protein works with two RNA molecules. There's
the CarNA, the CRISPR RNA, which carries the
targeting sequence matching the viral DNA. And
then there's the trach RNA or transactivating
CRISPR RNA, which acts as a kind of scaffold
to activate the Cas9 protein. So Doudna and Charpentier's
genius was simplifying this complex two -part
system into one single engineered molecule, the
single guide RNA, or sgRNA. Yes. This sgRNA contained
both the targeting information and the scaffold
necessary to recruit and activate the Cas9 enzyme.
all in one piece. That simplification was revolutionary.
It means if you want to cut a piece of DNA, you
just synthesize an sgRNA that matches your target
sequence, pair it with the Cas9 protein, and
put it in the cell. The guide RNA directs the
Cas9 to the precise location in the genome. And
this brings us to one of the most crucial pieces
of molecular detail that often gets overlooked,
but is so essential for you to understand. And
that's the protospacer -adjacent motif. The PAM
sequence. The PAM sequence. Okay, why is that
specific short sequence so important? The PAM
sequence, it's usually just two to six base pairs
long, and it's the molecular handshake. It's
a specific sequence that must exist right next
to the target site in the host DNA. And Cas9
won't cut unless it sees that. Cas9 does not
cut unless it first recognizes and binds to that
PAM sequence. This acts as a critical safety
feature for the bacteria. It ensures Cas9 only
targets foreign invaders, and it prevents the
system from slicing up the bacterium's own stored
CRISPR sequences. Okay, so Doudna and Charpentier
didn't just show that Cas9 could cut. They showed
that because the guide RNA was so easily swappable,
the entire system could be aimed at any desired
sequence in the genome of any organism. As long
as there was a PAM sequence nearby. Right. It
demonstrated full programmability. Exactly. That
flexibility is why it's called a revolution.
You don't need years of... re -engineering specific
enzymes for specific targets anymore. You just
change the RNA sequence in the guide molecule.
This ease, precision, and speed transformed the
landscape of biological research almost overnight.
The ensuing recognition was pretty much inevitable.
They were jointly awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize
in Chemistry for this development, solidifying
its place as one of the most significant biological
breakthroughs ever. A tool, this powerful one,
that allows us to edit evolution itself. It naturally
explodes into three distinct and very high stakes
theaters. Immense applications, necessary ethical
debates, and brutal intellectual property battles.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Let's start
with the incredible potential. The applications
are immediate and profound. They touch everything
from fundamental research to global food security.
Beyond just understanding basic cell function,
which has already accelerated so rapidly, we
see immediate therapeutic promise. Our sources
list treatments for severe inherited conditions
like sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's
disease. The precision allows scientists to correct
the single faulty gene responsible for the condition.
It's incredible. And it's not just genetic disorders.
I mean, consider HIV. The virus integrates its
DNA into the host cell's genome. CRISPR offers
the possibility of precisely excising that viral
DNA from T cells, effectively curing a persistent
infection that conventional drugs can only manage.
And then there's the massive applications in
plant and animal research, dramatically shortening
the time needed to develop sustainable, disease
-resistant crops. But the magnitude of this power
demanded an immediate and careful ethical framework.
And Doudna was one of the first scientists to
really sound the alarm on the technology she
helped create. Her role as a thought leader here
is just crucial. Recognizing how fast the field
was moving, Doudna, along with other leading
biologists, called for an immediate worldwide
moratorium on certain clinical applications of
gene editing. Very early on, she helped force
the global community to pause and consider the
implications. The key ethical distinction here,
which is essential for our listeners to grasp,
is the difference between somatic and germline
editing. How does Doudna draw that line? She
strongly supports somatic gene editing. Soma
means body. These are changes made to non -reproductive
body cells, like liver cells or blood cells.
These edits are confined to the individual patient,
they treat the disease, and they do not get passed
down to the next generation. This is essentially
just treating the individual with a highly advanced
form of medicine. But she opposes germline gene
editing. Yes. Germline editing involves making
changes to embryos, eggs, or sperm, the reproductive
cells. Any edit made here is inheritable. It
gets passed down to all future generations. And
this is where the scientific community's deepest
ethical concerns lie. It is. You're moving beyond
therapy for an individual to potentially altering
the human gene pool forever. Dedna has been really
emphatic in her opposition to germline editing,
especially for non -therapeutic enhancement purposes.
It shows a scientist fully aware that she has
created a tool that, in her words, holds the
unthinkable power to control evolution. And that
awareness is why she stepped into the ethical
arena, understanding that the science was just
moving faster than the societal consensus. Now,
in parallel with this ethical debate, the question
of who owned this foundational technology, it
became a legal cage match. It really did. Yeah.
The high stakes intellectual property conflict
that defined the mid 2010s. This was the complex
patent war between the UC Berkeley team, led
by Doudna and Charpentier, and the Broad Institute
of MIT and Harvard, primarily featuring Feng
Zhang. The stakes were astronomical. We're talking
potentially trillions of dollars in future royalties.
So what was the core difference in their patent
claims? The conflict revolved around the timeline
and the context of application. The Doudnaw UC
Berkeley team's claim was based on the fundamental
description or conception of the universal programmable
system. So they showed how to engineer the sgRNA
to cut any DNA in a test tube, and they detailed
the theory of how it would work in more complex
cells. Right. And the Broad Institute's argument?
The Broad Institute, a few months later, demonstrated
that the Cas9 system could successfully edit
genes specifically in eukaryotic cells, complex
cells, like human cells, that contain a nucleus.
So their legal argument centered on reduction
to practice. Exactly. That they were the first
to provide physical, published evidence that
the system worked in the complex environment
of human cells, which was an environment that
had been considered much harder to penetrate.
So the argument boiled down to... Who should
get the patent? The inventor who conceived of
the fundamental tool and explained how it could
be used universally. Or the team that first provided
empirical proof that it worked in the most economically
valuable cells, namely human cells. That's the
core legal and philosophical divide. In 2017,
the U .S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board initially
favored the Broad Institute regarding the specific
claims involving application in eukaryotic cells.
It was a complex ruling because it suggested
that applying a known system to a new environment
could be considered a non -obvious patentable
invention, separate from the original invention
of the system itself. But that wasn't the final
word, was it? No, far from it. The UC Berkeley
group eventually received broader patents covering
the general technique of programmable gene editing.
And on top of that, the European landscape offered
a completely different result. What happened
in Europe? The European Patent Office disallowed
the broad institute's initial claim due to a
procedural flaw. It was related to who was listed
on the patent application versus the original
scientific publication. A legal technicality.
A very important one. It shifted the momentum
significantly. suggesting the UC Berkeley group
would likely hold stronger patent positions in
Europe for the general method. The whole patent
landscape is still this multifaceted, high -value
conflict. Despite that intense rivalry, which
Dodna described at one point as feeling like
a divorce, this period fueled immediate commercial
efforts. Yeah, she jumped into entrepreneurship
almost instantly to translate the technology
into usable treatments and diagnostics. She recognized
that foundational research, no matter how profound,
needs a mechanism to reach patients. She co -founded
Caribou Biosciences in 2011, even before the
seminal paper was published. And she was briefly
involved in Editus Medicine, which also focused
on gene therapy. Briefly. She was a co -founder
in September 2013 alongside Zhang, but she resigned
in June 2014, reflecting the complexity and strain
of that early competitive environment. But she
shifted her focus. co -founding Intelia Therapeutics,
which is explicitly focused on in vivo gene editing,
delivering the CRISPR tools directly into the
patient's body to treat genetic diseases. And
critically, she later co -founded Scribe Therapeutics.
They're focused on next generation CRISPR tools,
specifically Scribe pioneered CasX, a newly discovered
family of Cas proteins. Why are these next generation
Cas proteins so important? I mean, isn't Cas9
the gold standard? Cas9 is a very large protein,
which makes... it challenging to package into
delivery vehicles, like the viruses that are
used to shuttle the gene editor into human cells.
CasX, which Scribe focuses on, is significantly
more compact. Its smaller size means it can be
delivered more easily and efficiently, opening
up new avenues for treatment where size constraints
were a major hurdle. So she's not just focused
on application, but on constantly improving the
tool itself. Right. Her entrepreneurial endeavors
really demonstrate that the goal isn't just winning
a Nobel Prize. It's ensuring the mechanism gets
out into the world to solve real problems. You
know, for most scientists, the Nobel Prize is
the culmination of a career. But for Doudna,
it seems to have been more of a launching pad.
A launching pad for massive institution -building
work focused on societal impact. And her primary
vehicle for this is the Innovative Genomics Institute,
or IGI. She co -founded it in 2014 and serves
as its director. leveraging this collaboration
between UC Berkeley and UCSF. The IGI's mandate
is huge. It's designed to accelerate the application
of genome editing technology to three pillars
of major societal problems, human health, sustainable
agriculture, and climate change. That goes far
beyond basic lab science. It does. So what does
that kind of ambitious research look like on
a day -to -day level in her lab today? Well,
they maintain a focus on optimizing the tool.
They continue to study the structure and function
of diverse CRISPR -Cas systems, like CasX and
Cas12, always looking for a better, more precise
molecular cutter. But the applied work is massive.
Oh, yeah. They're dedicating significant resources
to developing novel and efficient delivery mechanisms,
just figuring out how to safely and precisely
target the molecular scissors to the right cells
in the body. And you mentioned a fascinating
novel technique they're researching. Precisely
editing microbiomes. That seems incredibly complex.
It is, but the potential is enormous. Instead
of editing human cells, they're developing ways
to use CRISPR to precisely edit the complex microbial
communities that inhabit our bodies or our soil.
So you could, what, eradicate antibiotic -resistant
bacteria? Potentially. Or you could engineer
soil microbiomes to sequester carbon more effectively,
directly addressing climate change and human
health challenges at the same time. That focus
on immediate large -scale application was starkly
illustrated by her response to the global COVID
-19 crisis. Absolutely. The pandemic hit in early
2020, and Doudna immediately mobilized the IGI
infrastructure. She quickly organized an effort
to repurpose CRISPR -based technologies to address
the virus. They didn't just study it. They acted
as a public health service. The IGI testing center
ended up processing a massive volume over half
a million patient samples. Right from the youthy
community and surrounding critical areas, including
essential farm workers in the Salinas Valley.
It really proved the power of having such a dynamic
research infrastructure ready to pivot. And on
top of that, her diagnostics company, Mammoth
Biosciences, played a key role. Yes, in developing
a rapid, CRISPR -based point -of -need diagnostic
test for COVID -19. This diagnostic test was
noted as being much faster and less expensive
than the traditional QRT -PCR tests that were
being used widely at the time. It showed that
CRISPR isn't just about editing genes. It's also
a highly sensitive biosensing tool. And that's
what Mammoth Biosciences focuses on. Exactly.
She co -founded it in 2017. And it focuses entirely
on leveraging this sensing capability of CRISPR
to create rapid, precise diagnostic tests across
various fields. Healthcare, agriculture. biodefense,
environmental monitoring. So it's a crucial commercial
strategy, using the precision of Cas proteins
for rapid detection, not just for cutting. Right.
And beyond her direct work, her influence spans
the entire scientific and financial landscape.
She holds major advisory roles, guiding investment
decisions for colossal entities like Altos Labs,
Johnson & Johnson, and Sixth Street Partners.
That kind of institutional weight shows that
the decisions she makes ripple across global
capital investment in biotech. And here is a
striking testament to her stature in computational
science, even though she is fundamentally a biochemist.
The announcement in 2025 that a new supercomputer
was being named after her. The Doudna supercomputer.
Intended for the National Energy Research Scientific
Computing Center at LBNL, it's going to be the
successor to the Perlmutter supercomputer, focusing
on integrating AI into massive scientific research
calculations. To have a major piece of national
computational infrastructure, named after you,
shows an influence that just transcends your
original discipline. It acknowledges the computational
revolution that CRISPR started. And to ground
this monumental figure, we can look at some of
the personal details that humanize her ambition.
She's married to Jamie Cate, who is also a distinguished
professor at Berkeley. And his own work intersects
perfectly with the IGI's mission. He focuses
on using gene -editing yeast for biofuel production.
It's a family dedicated to applied science. The
source material even notes their move to Berkeley
in 2002 was partially because Kate preferred
the less formal, research -focused environment
of the West Coast. And, you know, continuing
the tradition of curiosity and technological
focus, their son, born in 2002, is currently
attending UC Berkeley. Studying electrical engineering
and computer science. It's a powerful legacy
of foundational and applied science. So we've
navigated the full scope of Jennifer Downer's
career. The key takeaway for you, the listener,
is really understanding that the greatest applied
breakthroughs often spring from the most detailed,
basic, and seemingly obscure fundamental research.
Right, the structural knowledge she gained. Bainstakingly
solving the 3D architecture of ribozymes and
realizing that RNA could fold into these complex
functional shapes using elements like clustered
magnesium ions, that was the crucial foundation.
It was everything. Without that deep expertise
in nucleic acid structure, the breakthrough of
engineering the single guide RNA to program Cas9
simply couldn't have happened. Her journey really
confirms that basic curiosity fueled by books
like The Double Helix ultimately culminated in
the creation of this universe. tool. A tool that
addresses humanity's most persistent challenges,
from inherited disease correction to developing
climate resilient agriculture. And as she co
-authored in her book, A Crack in Creation, the
power she helped unleash truly is an unthinkable
power. She remains focused, not so much on the
science now, the science is largely solved, but
on the sociological challenge of access and equity.
She has stated very clearly that she is, and
I'm quoting here, concerned that the benefits
of the technology might not reach those who need
it most if we're not thoughtful and deliberate
about how we develop the technology. So the challenge
has shifted from making the tool work to ensuring
the tool benefits all of humanity, not just privileged
segments. Exactly. So we leave you with this
final provocative question to consider. If CRISPR
technology allows us to fundamentally solve issues
in health, agriculture and climate change simultaneously,
and this technology is largely owned and commercialized
by private companies, whose responsibility is
it? The scientist who creates the tool, the government
that regulates it or the market that commercializes
it to actively ensure the benefits of this unthinkable
power are distributed equitably across the globe.
Something to reflect upon as we witness the code
of life continuing to be rewritten. Thanks for
diving deep with us. We'll see you next time.