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path in life, one could say, began in childhood e
xplorations of the Hawaiian rainforests. When she was seven years old the family moved to Hilo on Hawaii’s Big Island. She was mesmerized by exotic mosses and fungi and wanted to know more about the intricate wonders of nature. “Growing up in Hawaii was hugely influential,” she says. “Everywhere you go, you are surrounded by life. It’s a big evolutionary laboratory. Because Hawaii is so isolated and volcanic, everything that lives in Hawaii came from somewhere else and was shaped by the islands.” The introduction to science continued during her early teens when her father, a professor of American literature, gave her a copy of The Double Helix. Jim Watson’s account of the discovery of the structure of DNA made her realize that it was possible to do experiments on what a molecule looks. The insight blew her away. “The Double Helix was eye-opening to me in many ways, and really got me thinking about what a life in science might be like,” she says. During the mid-80s Jennifer studied biochemistry at Pomona College, California, and then entered Harvard University, where she would earn her PhD. Her interest in RNA was really sparked by working with genetics professor and Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak, an experience that laid the foundation for her work on CRISPR. “He was deeply interested in the origins of life, and he was able to translate a big question like that into experiments we could perform in the lab. We published a series of papers while I was a graduate student that showed that you could develop very simple RNA molecules that could synthesize copies of themselves. That was really the start of my love of RNA, and it set me on a path that would eventually lead me to CRISPR,” says Doudna. She spent the following years at University of Colorado Boulder and Yale University before moving to UC Berkeley for a joint professorship in Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry. In 2006, Doudna was introduced to CRIPSR by her colleague Dr. Jillian Banfield. Banfield suspected it was a type of bacterial immune system, but that was still just a hypothesis at the time. When that was proven shortly afterwards, the big question became how it functioned. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG 55