American biochemist at UC Berkeley who co-invented CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing with Emmanuelle Charpentier, winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Facts
Born
February 19, 1964, Washington, D.C.
Field
Biochemistry, genome editing
Known for
CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing
Honor
2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Role
Professor, UC Berkeley; founder, IGI

Background

Jennifer Doudna is an American biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, best known as a co-inventor of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing. Working with the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, Doudna showed in 2012 that a bacterial immune system could be reprogrammed into a precise, programmable tool for cutting DNA at chosen locations, a discovery that transformed molecular biology and medicine. For that work the two shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, becoming the first pair of women to win the prize together. Doudna grew up in Hilo, Hawaii, earned a bachelor's degree from Pomona College and a PhD from Harvard Medical School, and trained originally as a structural biologist studying RNA. Her laboratory solved the structure of a ribozyme, work that supported the RNA world hypothesis and that later proved essential to understanding the CRISPR machinery, which uses a guide RNA to direct its activity.

CRISPR-Cas9

CRISPR sequences were first noticed as an odd feature of bacterial genomes, part of an immune system that bacteria use to recognize and destroy invading viruses. In 2012 Doudna and Charpentier, with colleagues including Martin Jinek, published a landmark paper in Science showing that the Cas9 protein, guided by a single engineered RNA, could be programmed to cut double-stranded DNA at any chosen sequence. The result turned a curiosity of microbiology into a general-purpose editing tool, and within months laboratories around the world adapted the system to edit the genomes of human cells, plants, and animals. CRISPR-Cas9 is faster, cheaper, and easier to use than earlier methods, and it rapidly became a standard technique underpinning much of modern synthetic biologyArticleSynthetic BiologyEngineered cells and biological circuits could sense disease, manufacture therapies, and adapt inside the body.Read entry → and gene therapy. Later refinements, including base and prime editing, extended the toolkit to make single-letter changes without cutting the DNA backbone. A high-profile patent dispute followed between the University of California and the Broad Institute, though the scientific credit was widely shared.

Applications and ethics

Genome editing based on Doudna's work moved into the clinic within a decade. In 2023 regulators approved the first CRISPR-based therapy, a treatment for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. Doudna has co-founded several companies to develop the technology, including Caribou Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, and Scribe Therapeutics, and firms such as Verve TherapeuticsCompanyVerve TherapeuticsBiotechnology company founded in 2018 that develops one-time base-editing treatments to permanently lower cholesterol for heart disease, acquired by Eli Lilly in 2025.Company → have applied related editing methods to lower cholesterol. In 2014 she founded the Innovative Genomics Institute, a partnership between UC Berkeley and UCSF, and she has been an outspoken advocate for careful governance of the technology. After a Chinese scientist announced in 2018 that he had edited the genomes of human embryos brought to term, Doudna joined many researchers in condemning the experiment and calling for a moratorium on heritable human editing. Her 2017 book A Crack in Creation, written with Samuel Sternberg, explores these questions for a general audience.

Recognition

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Doudna has received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Japan Prize, and numerous other honors. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world, and she is frequently cited as a defining scientist of the genomic era, part of a small group, including the geneticist George ChurchPersonGeorge ChurchHarvard and MIT geneticist and genomics pioneer whose lab helped launch genome sequencing, CRISPR editing, and de-extinction, and who has founded dozens of biotech companies.Person →, who have shaped both the technical and ethical trajectory of genome editing.

TagsCRISPRGene EditingNobel LaureatesBiotech