Charleston County Public Library

The code breaker, Jennifer Doudna and the race to understand our genetic code, Walter Isaacson ; with Sarah Durand

eng

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biography

The code breaker

compact disc

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1306161648

Walter Isaacson ; with Sarah Durand

Jennifer Doudna and the race to understand our genetic code

When Jennifer Doudna was a sixth grader in Hilo, Hawaii, she came home from school one afternoon and found a book on her bed. It was The Double Helix, James Watson's account of how he and Francis Crick had discovered the structure of DNA, the spiral-staircase molecule that carries the genetic instruction code for all forms of life. This book guided Jennifer Doudna to focus her studies not on DNA, but on what seemed to take a backseat in biochemistry: figuring out the structure of RNA, a closely related molecule that enables the genetic instructions coded in DNA to express themselves. Doudna became an expert in determining the shapes and structures of these RNA molecules, an expertise that led her to develop a revolutionary new technique that could edit human genes. Today gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR are already being used to eliminate simple genetic defects that cause disorders such as Tay-Sachs and sickle cell anemia. For now, however, Jennifer and her team are being deployed against our most immediate threat, the coronavirus, and you have just been given a front row seat to that war

juvenile

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Jennifer Doudna and the race to understand our genetic code