Wednesday, May 12, 2021

The Codebreaker - Walter Isaacson

Sub-title: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

This was a wonderful read for so many reasons. Isaacson introduces the story by explaining the three great revolutions experienced in modern times: the industrial, the information and now, the life sciences revolution.  He compares the growth of people being able to do digital coding by manipulating bits, the on/off switches of the information technology world, to the future growth of people who will do genetic coding by editing and manipulating our DNA.  The innovators in both are those who can not only read the code but write it.

 I'd heard the term "CRISPR" and knew it had to do with DNA but didn't understand what it was.  The author took us through the life of Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize winning microbiologist whose curiosity led her from an early age to pursue RNA, the messenger part of our genetic makeup.  She won the Nobel Prize along with Emmanuelle Charpentier, for their research on how to alter our genes and how to "cut" DNA using  RNA to point to the edit point.  CRISPR -  Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - that were discovered in the 1980s, provides this pointer to where the editing of  DNA is desired. Doudna and Charpentier showed how to use CRISPR as an editing tool. 

I was swept along in the story that wove the history of the discovery of DNA, the effort to map the human genome and the ability to edit genes with CRISPR into a coherent, understandable whole.  At the same time the author revealed the cooperation and competition among scientists and their human side as collaborators and competitors.

I was uplifted to read of their cooperation in finding ways to test for Covid-19 when it emerged in 2020 and of their dedication and single mindedness in pursuing solutions. Several chapters are devoted to explaining and exploring the ethical use of the CRISPR technology and how it might be regulated, providing thought-provoking discussion.

 I can't recommend this book enough.

Quotes:

"[from Emmanuelle Charpentier] I began to see myself as a scientist and not just as a student...I wanted to create knowledge, not just learn it."

"1998 conference at UCLA...focused on the ethics of making genetic edits that would be inherited.  These 'germline edits 'were fundamentally different, medically and morally, from somatic-cell edits that affect only certain cells in an individual patient.  The germline was a red line that scientists had been reluctant to cross."

"On most great moral issues, there are two competing perspectives.  One emphasizes individual rights, personal liberty, and deference to person choice [Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia].  The other are those that view justice and morality through the lens of what is best for the society and perhaps even the species [John Rawls's A Theory of Justice].

Notes:

"Count Me In" - public database with DNA shared by cancer patients.

1997 film Gattaca (the title is made up of the letter of the four DNA bases) told of the potential of genetic screening and selection.

Preprint servers such as Rxiv and bioRxiv, free and open publishing of scientific research papers.

Published: 2021   Read: May 2021   Genre: Science, Biography

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