Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

Caught in the act: Cas9 severs a strand of DNA, captured by Japanese researchers using high-speed atomic force microscopy. Courtesy of Hiroshi Nishimasu.

The Cas9 caress: Schematic shows the Cas9 protein (teal) holding the guide RNA (blue) scans for its target DNA (red) by first recognizing a PAM site (yellow). Courtesy of HHMI BioInteractive.

Francisco Mojica and the author at the salterns of Santa Pola, Spain, in 2019.

Microbiologist Luciano Marraffini, who collaborated with Feng Zhang in 2012, in his lab at The Rockefeller University, New York (September 2019).

Jill Banfield, UC Berkeley professor who, among other things, introduced her colleague Jennifer Doudna to CRISPR. Courtesy of Derek Reich/Human Nature.

Plant biologist Caixia Gao in a field of CRISPR-edited wheat (to reduce susceptibility to powdery mildew) in Beijing, China. Courtesy of Stefen Chow.

Fyodor Urnov, the expert raconteur of genome editing, now at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Courtesy of Derek Reich/Human Nature.

Dana Carroll, biochemist who pioneered use of zinc finger nucleases.

Larger than life: George Church next to an ex-woolly mammoth in a hotel lobby in Yakutsk, the coldest city on earth in Eastern Siberia. Courtesy of Eriona Hysolli.

Church in his office at Harvard Medical School.

Jennifer Doudna (UC Berkeley and HHMI), cradling a model of Cas9, the molecular scissors of genome editing, opens the World Science Festival in New York in May 2019.

Emmanuelle Charpentier, founding director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, on a flying visit to New York (September 2018).

DC united: Doudna-Charpentier team photo on the steps of Stanley Hall, UC Berkeley, in 2011. (L-to-R): Charpentier, Doudna, Martin Jínek, Krystof Chyliński, and Ines Fonfara. Courtesy of M. Jínek.

Lithuania’s Virginijus Šikšnys receives the 2018 Kavli Prize in nanoscience from King Harald of Norway, alongside Doudna and Charpentier (September 2018). Courtesy of Fredrik Hagen/NTB scanpix.

Feng Zhang holds CRISPR in his hands, with 60 Minutes’ correspondent Bill Whitaker. Courtesy of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Winners of Canada’s Gairdner Awards in 2016. (L-to-R): Anthony Fauci, Zhang, Charpentier, Rodolophe Barrangou, Doudna, and Philippe Horvath.

Base editing and more: David Liu in his office at the Broad Institute, under the watchful eye of Tony Stark. Courtesy of Juliana Sohn, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

First authors: Alexis Komor and Nicole Gaudelli, former postdocs in the Liu lab, in Victoria, British Columbia, February 2019.

Base adjustment: the first base editors developed in the Liu lab perform chemistry directly on DNA (see chapter 22). The cytosine base editor (CBE) is a three-component molecular machine that converts cytosine to guanine (via uridine). The adenine base editor (ABE) catalyzes the transition of adenine to thymine (via inosine).

Pope Francis urges caution in applying CRISPR during an address at the Vatican in April 2018. Courtesy of the Cura Foundation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren quizzes former Editas CEO Katrine Bosley and Stanford University’s Matthew Porteus at a U.S. Senate committee hearing (November 2017).

Lap-Chee Tsui, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, greets the author prior to the start of Hong Kong summit on genome editing, November 2018.

Feng Zhang discusses the potential of CRISPR to treat a wide spectrum of genetic diseases at the Hong Kong conference.

He Jiankui details the results of editing the DNA of Lulu and Nana, the CRISPR twins, at the Hong Kong summit, November 2018. Courtesy of William Kearney/U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

CCR5 variants: on the left, the structure of the normal CCR5 receptor and the Δ32 variant; on the right, the variants in Lulu and Nana (abnormal amino-acid sequences in red). Courtesy of Sean Ryder/The CRISPR Journal.

Meet the press: More than 200 photographers await the arrival of He Jiankui at the Hong Kong summit. Courtesy of William Kearney/U.S. National Academy of Sciences. On the right, Robin Lovell-Badge in the middle of a media scrum.

Home alone: He Jiankui spotted on a balcony in Shenzhen while under house arrest in December 2018. Courtesy of Elsie Chen.

David Sanchez, who has sickle-cell disease, sees hope for a cure in CRISPR. Courtesy of Derek Reich/Human Nature.

Dame Kay Davies (University of Oxford), co-chair of an international commission on heritable genome editing, with the author (no relation).