Scientific Career
Doudna is a professor of chemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley. Her lab's work on the structure and function of RNA led to the landmark 2012 paper with Emmanuelle Charpentier demonstrating that CRISPR-Cas9 could be programmed to cut specific DNA sequences.
CRISPR Revolution
The Doudna-Charpentier paper showed that the bacterial immune system CRISPR could be repurposed as a general genome-editing tool. This discovery has transformed biomedical research, agriculture, and industrial biotechnology.
Ethics and Policy
Doudna has been vocal about the ethical implications of gene editing, co-organizing the first International Summit on Human Gene Editing in 2015 and advocating for responsible use of the technology.