BOOKS & ARTS Breaker of chains RNA and CRISPR, with Doudna taking cen- of CRISPR in treating diseases such as sickle tre stage. Doudna was an elite scientist before cell disease, he hopes that “Zhang and [George] she got smitten by the CRISPR bug: she trained Church and perhaps David Liu will someday with two chemistry Nobel laureates (Jack win the Nobel Prize for Medicine.” Szostak and Tom Cech) and was named an “We can steer a course that avoids a investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Promethean quest for controlling our own Institute. She had co- authored some 20 ‘CNS’ endowments while also avoiding complete sub- (Cell/Nature/Science) papers when she met mission to the vagaries of a lottery,” Isaacson Charpentier in 2011. writes. “Wisdom involves finding the right The seminal work of Doudna and Char- balance.” pentier was built on a foundation 35 years in In the closing section, Isaacson follows the making. Discoveries made in Japan and Doudna, Zhang and their colleagues as The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Europe described peculiar DNA repeat regions the CRISPR community pivots to tackle the Editing, and the Future of the Human Race in bacteria and archaea, before three groups COVID-19 crisis. Doudna inspired her troops By Walter Isaacson more or less simultaneously tied their function to set up a PCR diagnostics lab from scratch, Simon & Schuster (2021) US$35 to that of an anti- viral immune system. This while the rivals set about developing the was proven experimentally in 2007 by a team at next generation of CRISPR- based diagnos- n time- honoured tradition, the UC Berkeley Danisco, a yoghurt company of all places. Yes, tic tools. Isaacson senses a more collaborative biochemist Jennifer Doudna received her without a functioning CRISPR system to com- spirit between the rivals that will surely pay INobel Prize wake- up call in the middle of bat phages, your pizza cheese and many other dividends come the next pandemic. the night. More unusually, the caller had an fine dairy products are in jeopardy. English accent. Doudna, having slept through Isaacson breezes through the early history Isaacson senses a more the official call from Stockholm, was awakened of CRISPR without shirking some technical collaborative spirit between by a diligent Nature reporter seeking her reac- nitty gritty — from the significance of tracr- the rivals that will surely pay tion following the public announcement of the RNAs to nuclear localization signals and codon 2020 Chemistry prize. optimization. He highlights the rivalries — not dividends come the next The development of clustered regu- just the famous rift between Doudna and the pandemic larly interspaced short palindromic repeats Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang but also among (CRISPR) had been widely tipped for a Nobel former colleagues. Charpentier, ‘a reticent The Code Breaker is a true celebration of Prize despite a bitter protracted patent feud Parisian’ now based in Berlin, comes to resent science and scientists, for all their flaws and over the breakthrough gene editing technology. Doudna’s elevated media profile (even though jealousies. In a book of such scope, Isaacson In the end, the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Doudna commendably took ownership of skips over some key issues, especially the poten- was shared by Doudna and French micro- the CRISPR ethics debate) and her successful tial of CRISPR to help edit crop and livestock biologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, reward- book A Crack in Creation. Doudna co- authored genomes to feed the planet, or tackle malaria ing a collaboration forged on the streets of this with Sam Sternberg but it is written — using gene drives. But The Code Breaker will San Juan, Puerto Rico, in early 2011. Fifteen to Charpentier’s dismay — in the first per- deservedly reach a huge audience unaccus- months later, in what gene editing pioneer son. In a lovely scene, Isaacson reveals how tomed to reading biographies of science celebri- Fyodor Urnov hailed as an “immortal” paper he helped engineer a rapprochement between ties or appreciating a microbial arms race as old in Science, Doudna and Charpentier laid the the two women. as life on earth. Critically, it will raise the public foundation for a genome editing revolution. While Doudna is the common thread, understanding of CRISPR and the potential of The ‘CRISPR craze’ has spawned myr- Isaacson’s story travels along many tributar- genome editing for curing diseases, improving iad applications in medicine, agriculture and ies. He spotlights younger researchers who food production and vanquishing viruses. basic research, prompting countless magazine are adding to the CRISPR toolbox and dab- cover stories, books and films, ranging from bles in some CRISPR experiments of his own Reviewed by Kevin Davies an award- winning documentary to a prepos- (thankfully under the watchful eye of Doudna’s Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., New Rochelle, NY, USA. terous sci- fi blockbuster starring The Rock. postdocs). Later on, there is a detour to visit e- mail: [email protected] And now it has inspired the latest page- turning Jim Watson, recuperating from a serious car https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-021-00274-5 tale from historian and former TIME editor, accident and other self- inflicted wounds, at Competing interests Walter Isaacson. his Cold Spring Harbor home. Like Doudna, K.D. is the Executive Editor of The CRISPR Journal. The author of best- selling biographies of Isaacson remembers being electrified read- Further reading Da Vinci, Einstein and Steve Jobs, Isaacson wea- ing a first edition of Jim Watson’s classic book, Davies, K. Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the ves a riveting story of science, biotechnology, The Double Helix. Given the dawning potential New Era of Genome Editing (Pegasus Books, 2020) NATURE REVIEWS | C HE MI STRY VOLUME 5 | MAY 2021 | 297 0123456789();: .