CRISPR is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments of bacteriophages that had previously infected the prokaryote. They are used to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages during subsequent infections. Hence these sequences play a key role in the antiviral defense system of prokaryotes and provide a form of acquired immunity. CRISPR is found in approximately 50% of sequenced bacterial genomes and nearly 90% of sequenced archaea.
Walter Seff Isaacson is an American author, journalist, and professor. He has been the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., the chair and CEO of CNN, and the editor of Time.
Michael A. Marletta is an American biochemist. He was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Italian immigrants. He graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1973 with an A.B. degree in biology and chemistry, and from the University of California, San Francisco in 1978 with a Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, where he studied with George Kenyon. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Christopher T. Walsh at MIT from 1978-1980 and continued as a faculty member at MIT from 1980-1987 whereupon he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was John G. Searle Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the college of pharmacy and professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan. In 2001, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to assume roles as Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and served as the chair of the department of chemistry from 2005 until 2010. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. From January 2012 to August 2014, Marletta was president and CEO of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, succeeding Richard Lerner.
Jennifer Anne Doudna is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a Nobel in the sciences. She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, "for the development of a method for genome editing." She is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair Professor in the department of chemistry and the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.
Feng Zhang is a Chinese–American biochemist. Zhang currently holds the James and Patricia Poitras Professorship in Neuroscience at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has appointments with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is most well known for his central role in the development of optogenetics and CRISPR technologies.
Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. As of 2015, she has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. In 2018, she founded an independent research institute, the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of a method for genome editing". This was the first science Nobel Prize ever won by two women only.
Editas Medicine, Inc.,, is a clinical-stage biotechnology company which is developing therapies for rare diseases based on CRISPR gene editing technology. Editas headquarters is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has facilities in Boulder, Colorado.
Intellia Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing novel, potentially curative therapeutics leveraging CRISPR-based technologies. The company's in vivo programs use intravenously administered CRISPR as the therapy, in which the company's proprietary delivery technology enables highly precise editing of disease-causing genes directly within specific target tissues. Intellia's ex vivo programs use CRISPR to create the therapy by using engineered human cells to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz is an American biochemist and structural biologist. She is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and president of Caribou Biosciences, a genome editing company.
The He Jiankui affair is a scientific and bioethical controversy concerning the use of genome editing following its first use on humans by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who edited the genomes of human embryos in 2018. He became widely known on 26 November 2018 after he announced that he had created the first human genetically edited babies. He was listed in the Time's 100 most influential people of 2019. The affair led to ethical and legal controversies, resulting in the indictment of He and two of his collaborators, Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou. He eventually received widespread international condemnation.
He Jiankui is a Chinese biophysicist who was an associate professor in the Department of Biology of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China. Earning his Ph.D. from Rice University in Texas on protein evolution, including that of CRISPR, He learned gene-editing techniques (CRISPR/Cas9) as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in California.
CRISPR gene editing is a genetic engineering technique in molecular biology by which the genomes of living organisms may be modified. It is based on a simplified version of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 antiviral defense system. By delivering the Cas9 nuclease complexed with a synthetic guide RNA (gRNA) into a cell, the cell's genome can be cut at a desired location, allowing existing genes to be removed and/or new ones added in vivo.
Human Nature is a 2019 documentary film directed by Adam Bolt and written by Adam Bolt and Regina Sobel. Producers of the film include Greg Boustead, Elliot Kirschner and Dan Rather.
Unnatural Selection is a 2019 American web documentary series in 4 episodes. It is presents an overview of genetic engineering and particularly, the DNA-editing technology of CRISPR, from the perspective of scientists, corporations and biohackers working from their home. The series was released on the video on demand Netflix in October 18, 2019.
Flagship Pioneering is an American life sciences venture capital company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that invests in biotechnology, life sciences, health and sustainability companies. Portfolio companies include Moderna, Indigo Agriculture, Inari Agriculture and Novomer. The firm both funds and incubates companies.
Mammoth Biosciences is a biotechnology company based in Brisbane, California developing diagnostic tests using CRISPR-Cas12a and CRISPR-based therapies using its proprietary ultra-small CRISPR systems. Several CRISPR-Cas systems identified through the company's metagenomics-based protein discovery platform, including members of the Casφ and Cas14 families of CRISPR-associated enzymes, have demonstrated potential for therapeutic genome editing in in vivo settings.
Sherlock Biosciences is a biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts developing diagnostic tests using CRISPR-Cas13. The company was founded in 2019 by Feng Zhang, Jim Collins, Omar Abudayyeh, and Jonathan Gootenberg of the Broad Institute.
Beam Therapeutics Inc. is an American biotechnology company conducting research in the field of gene therapies and genome editing. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the development of therapies, the company relies on CRISPR and prime editing, whereby single nucleotides in a DNA sequence can be modified without cutting the DNA, theoretically reducing the likelihood of off-target effects compared to previous CRISPR-based methods.
The Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) is a nonprofit scientific research institute founded by Nobel laureate and CRISPR gene editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna and biophysicist Jonathan Weissman. The institute is based at the University of California, Berkeley, and also has member researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, UC Davis, UCLA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Gladstone Institutes, and other collaborating research institutions. The IGI focuses on developing real-world applications of genome editing to address problems in human health, agriculture and climate change.
