Gene-Editing and the Nobel Prize

In the words of the inimitable Tommy Smothers, “When you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s hard to know when you’re finished.” I fear I step onto that ground sometimes, but still

I want to discuss a recent book by Walter Isaacson that has grabbed my attention - ‘The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.’ Jennifer Doudna and a co-working scientist from France, Emmanuelle Charpentier, recently won the Nobel Prize in Science for their work in the field of gene-editing.

     Isaacson presents the fascinating story in a way that this science novice understands it in a superficial way. I can’t make conclusions, but we’ll look at it anyway. 

     These two ladies’ invention for gene-editing is identified with the acronym CRISPR,  the letters standing for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Well, that should clear up any questions. Not? Whatever the terminology, it exists.

     It is apparently easy to use, that is, if you have a full-blown lab set up for such an exercise. The author Isaacson tells us how he spent a day with a lab technician who taught him to use CRISPR to edit genes. To quote, “I was pleased, but also a bit unnerved, to see how easy it was. Even I could do it!”

     Most of us have heard about those DNA tests where saliva swabs examined by trained technicians can determine from where our ancestors came.  The simplest definition I found of DNA states it is a molecule containing the instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce. These instructions are found inside every cell, and are passed down from parents to their children.     

     It’s fast getting deep, and I must heed the words of Tommy Smothers, but inside DNA things can be wrong, misspelled like one source calls it, which results in an illness, a physical deformity, even a psychological problem. What Doudna and her fellow researchers found was that bad DNA molecules could be “scissored” out with chemicals and replaced with desired good ones. It’s proven and accepted by the worldwide community of scientists. The search committee for the Nobel Prize noted its authenticity and impact by awarding the Nobel Prize for 2020 to her and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

     The impact of her work has not been lost on Doudna. She told of being woken from a nightmare where one of her colleagues came asking her to meet someone interested in gene-editing. She agreed to meet the person.  To her horror the man was Hitler. He said, “I want to understand the uses and implications of this amazing technology you have developed.” 

     Wide awake, her heart pounding, with premonitions of how her work could be perverted, she kept wondering if she’d created a toolbox for future Frankensteins. The CRISPR system is a great innovation for treating individual illnesses. But other genetic changes can be made as inheritable modifications that would pass on to future generations.

     A Chinese researcher has done just that when he decided to make a name for himself by editing the embryos of twin girls so they’d never develop HIV. His result ended up developing inheritable characteristics that these girls will pass on to their descendants. That doesn’t seem so bad, but China saw fit to put him on trial for committing an illegal act and place him in jail.

     A number of videos speaking to CRISPR can be found on Youtube. I heard one report about the Russian leader Putin having spoken to a group where he predicted that a sort of super-soldier could be developed who exhibited unusual bravery, resistance to radiation, or any other desired soldierly trait.

     Tommy Smothers keeps harrumphing and fidgeting around, so I won’t be able to ignore him much longer. So much of what has transpired came from James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 as represented by that spiraling double helix. 

     Doudna remembers the time as a girl when her father gave her a book titled ‘The Double Helix’ by Watson. At first she thought it was a detective novel, but as she read through it, she concluded it was just that. It led her to the field of biology which became her calling which kept developing to her present status in the field of science.

     The author Walter Isaacson, too, received a copy of Watson’s ‘The Double Helix’ from his father, but his life’s work took a different route, that of a biographer, among other things. As he says, “Curiosity is the key trait of the people who have fascinated me.” Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci have garnered his attention in biographies.

     Agriculture has used the science to develop genetically modified organisms, those GMOs that have entered the vocabulary. Some don’t care to eat the products, but how many of us know what   a GMO is or isn’t. And now we’ve turned to gene-editing for humans. The goal of course will be to direct it to ethical use. One newspaper headline shouted, “Are we ready to play God?” 

     Now I’ve gotta go cuz Tommy just said “Shut up!”