One of the most exciting developments in science is a process that goes by the complicated name CRISPR-Cas9. The last four parts of the name refer to an enzyme that can cut out genetic material with pinpoint accuracy, and the capital letters denote properties of genes that Cas9 uses to find the place where it can attach.
Since the gene that is cut off can also be replaced by another gene, the CRISPR technique offers the possibility of manipulating the genome, but such prospects were not yet apparent when researchers first began working with the CRISPR system. It had been doing so since the early years of the 20th century, initially only with bacteria. The aim was to find out how these tiny organisms defend themselves against viruses, with the commercial background questions being how to make yoghurt more durable, why bacteria are needed and how to prevent them from being destroyed by viruses. As it turned out, the bacteria themselves can do this, as nature has equipped them with the molecular apparatus known as CRISPR-Cas9, which was first described in 2012 by two women who were awarded the Nobel Prize for it and immediately saw that what works in bacteria could also work in human cells.
The successful duo consists of the American Jennifer Doudna and the French Emmanuelle Charpentier. A first biography of Jennifer Doudna has just been published under the title "The Code Breaker", whose author Walter Isaacson refers to "the future of the human race" in the subtitle. This book is about the opposite, namely the past of a human being, i.e. Jennifer Doudna, who in the aforementioned book recounts how she was given the book "The Double Helix" as a school pupil, in which Nobel Prize winner James Watson explains how the structure of genetic material was successfully devised in the form of the famous double helix. Among the many researchers working on this topic at the time, there was only one female researcher, Rosalind Franklin, who portrays Watson as somewhat macho, which has led to him being accused of wanting to keep women away from research. In fact, the opposite is the case. When Jennifer Doudna read Watson's book, it occurred to her that "women can also become great researchers". They would just have to be brave enough to speak out. And that's what she did.
