Doudna, Jennifer Anne, 1964–, American biochemist, b. Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Harvard Medical School, 1989. Doudna was a professor at Yale from 1994 to 2002, when she joined the faculty at the Univ. of California, Berkeley. Doudna has studied the structure and biochemistry of RNA, and her researches on the role of unusual repeating sequences in bacterial genomes led to her working with Emmanuelle Charpentier, who had already discovered how the sequences functioned in one bacterium. Together they determined how the bacterial immune system used the sequences, and adapted the system in the method known as CRISPR-Cas9 for genome editing. She and Charpentier shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing their “genetic scissors” approach that enables scientists to add, delete, or change genetic material at specific locations in the genome. The method has potential applications in treating cancer and other diseases, in curing inherited conditions, and in modifying crop plants to produce desired characteristics.
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