Sprouting from her journeys in Hilo’s rainforest, Jennifer Doudna became enthralled by science. Born on February 19, 1964, throughout her lifetime, Jennifer Doudna has helped further the idea of genome editing. When I first read about this I thought this was just for brain operations or something, but after doing research I can’t believe how complicated this editing can be for such as changing genetics of humans. Jennifer’s father, Martin, was a literature professor and Jennifer’s mother, Dorothy, was a history and english professor; the contrast of their daughter who majored in biochemistry in Pomona College. Jennifer was born in Washington D.C, but grew up in Hilo, Hawaii and from there was able to explore nature and become fascinated with it. Despite not being into STEM, Jennifer’s parents still supported her enthusiasm and got her The Double Helix, by James Watson, that started her spark of interest for biochemistry. She furthered this thirst for science as she spent a summer studying worms and mushrooms with family friend Dom Hemmes. After getting an undergraduate at Pomona, Jennifer received a PhD from Harvard. After working with different people, Doudna transferred to UC Berkeley with her husband Jamie Cate and they had a son named Andrew.
Through her efforts alongside, Emmanuelle Charpentier, a French microbiologist, the world was introduced to the molecular tool, CRISPR, a.k.a…show more content… Her work helped solve large RNA structures and helped others to further study the HDV ribozyme, the IRES, and protein-RNA complexes such as the signal recognition particle. In general, she studies up on biological processes with RNA in order to gain a better understanding. Two men who guided along this path were Jack Szostak and Tom Cech, and each contributed largely to the research on RNA. Both men had won Nobel prizes for their work and are important influences to Doudna’s knowledge, research, and
