Walter Isaacson’s new book offers an inspiring journey that could be the biggest frontier in science – our ability to edit gene strands and thus alter organisms, including humans
“The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Edition and the future of the human race,” by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)
Walter Isaacson did an admirable job on the biography of Steve Jobs, a difficult character who transformed six industries – personal computers, telephones, music, animated films, tablet computing and digital publishing.
In “Code Breaker,” Isaacson ‘s main character is the much more likely biochemistry researcher and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, but science is a harder subject for the average person to embrace.
Prerequisites are almost unnecessary – biology 101 and chemistry 101 would be useful in capturing the roles of introns and cryocooling crystals, for example.
The star of the CRISPR book – Concentration regularly transmits short palindromic transcripts – is the ability of scientists to modify genes that allow, for example, to repair defective genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis.
And at 512 pages, Code Breaker is a huge reading time investment with huge doses of science. Difficult reading at times with textbook-like scratches into the supporting science.
Isaacson does all of this, however, with unbridled enthusiasm, as if he could stop himself from turning into a scientist himself.
The influences of Doudna and the work of her colleagues are astounding, frightening and a testament to the scientific knowledge of our universities and research institutes.
In these research laboratories, Doudna and her colleagues are developing some of the most important developments in human history, enabling people to eliminate the risk of many diseases by changing of these genetic strands. Imagine how different our global experience would be this year if we had the ability to adapt our immune systems to resist COVID-19.
From there, it’s a short step to creating design people. Want a tall baby with brown eyes and dark hair? That ability raises moral and ethical concerns that people have not yet addressed.
The electronic revolution has changed everything about how we live, now the revolution of life sciences offers the potential to change life itself.