50 Fun Facts About Jennifer Doudna

Doudna's Nobel-winning method is a way of editing what?

She and Charpentier were the first to propose in 2012 that a bacterial immune system could be programmed to rewrite DNA.

Doudna shared the 2020 Nobel Prize with which scientist?

It was the first science Nobel ever won by two women alone.

Doudna's 2020 Nobel Prize was awarded in which category?

Many expected the medicine prize; the chemistry committee got there first.

Doudna has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since which year?

HHMI funds the person rather than the project, which gave her freedom to chase odd bacterial sequences.

Doudna was born in 1964 in which city?

Her father had a Ph.D. in English literature and her mother a master's in education.

When Doudna was seven, her family moved to which state so her father could teach American literature?

He took a post at the University of Hawaii at Hilo; she grew up fascinated by the island's flora and fauna.

Which book, given to her by her father in sixth grade, was a major inspiration for Doudna?

James Watson's 1968 account of discovering DNA's structure sat among the popular-science books he kept at home.

Which 10th-grade Hilo High School teacher does Doudna credit as a major influence on her pursuing science?

She also spent a summer working in the lab of mycologist Don Hemmes before graduating in 1981.

Doudna did her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at which California college?

Professors Fred Grieman and Corwin Hansch there had a major impact on her.

As a college sophomore, Doudna considered switching her major to what?

Ironically it was her French teacher who persuaded her to stay in science.

Doudna earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from which institution?

Her dissertation was on a system that increased the efficiency of a self-replicating catalytic RNA.

Who supervised Doudna's Ph.D. dissertation?

Szostak later shared the 2009 Nobel for telomeres; her postdoc adviser Cech had already won one for RNA catalysis.

As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, Doudna worked with which Nobel laureate?

She went there to crystallise an RNA enzyme, and met her future husband, then a graduate student.

Doudna's early career focused on determining the structure of which kind of molecule?

RNA enzymes could not be understood, she realised, until someone could actually see their three-dimensional shape.

Doudna's group solved the structure of the catalytic core of a Group I ribozyme from which organism?

They found a core of five magnesium ions in the P4-P6 domain around which the rest of the RNA folded.

How many magnesium ions did Doudna's group find clustered at the core of the ribozyme's P4-P6 domain?

They form a hydrophobic core, analogous but chemically distinct from the hydrophobic amino-acid cores of proteins.

Doudna joined the faculty of which university as an assistant professor in 1994?

She finished the ribozyme structure there in 1996 and became Henry Ford II Professor in 2000.

Doudna moved to Berkeley in 2002 to join which person, already there?

Cate preferred the informal West Coast; Doudna liked that Berkeley was a public university, and the couple's son was born that year.

Which biotech company did Doudna leave Berkeley for in 2009, returning after two months?

Colleague Michael Marletta helped her come back, and she cleared her obligations to concentrate on CRISPR.

Which Berkeley scientist introduced Doudna to CRISPR in 2006 after finding her via a Google search?

The search result was a cold call that changed both their careers.

What search phrase did the colleague who introduced Doudna to CRISPR type into Google?

The rest is history, and a Nobel Prize.

The CRISPR system's DNA-cutting protein, which Doudna compared to scissors, is called what?

It comes from the Streptococcus bacterial immune system and cooperates with a guide RNA to find its target.

In nature, CRISPR is an immune system that protects bacteria against what?

Bacteria store fragments of past invaders' DNA and use them to recognise and slice up the next attack.

The letters CRISPR stand for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic what?

Each repeat is separated by a spacer derived from a bacteriophage that infected the cell or its ancestors.

Who first described the DNA sequences later called CRISPR, in 1987?

His team cloned them by accident from E. coli; Spaniard Francisco Mojica later worked out what they did.

Doudna and Charpentier first met in 2011 at a conference in which place?

Charpentier's lab had shown that a small RNA called tracrRNA was essential to the system; the collaboration began there.

What is the synthetic molecule Doudna and Charpentier created to steer Cas9 to a chosen DNA sequence?

It is a chimera of the natural crRNA and tracrRNA, which is what made the system programmable.

Which organisation won the 2017 US patent decision over CRISPR-Cas9 in human cells?

A rival group had shown editing in cultured human cells months after the Doudna-Charpentier paper; the appeals court upheld the ruling in 2018.

Who showed CRISPR-Cas9 could edit human cells shortly after Doudna and Charpentier published?

Doudna nonetheless co-founded Editas Medicine with him in 2013, then quit the following June.

Doudna co-founded which company in 2011 to commercialise CRISPR technology?

Intellia is a Caribou spin-off; Editas came in 2013 and Mammoth in 2017.

Doudna quit Editas Medicine in 2014 and later declined to join which company co-founded by Charpentier?

She described the Editas break-up as "divorce"-like and did not want a repeat.

Scribe Therapeutics, co-founded by Doudna, pioneered which more compact next-generation enzyme?

It cuts DNA efficiently despite being much smaller than Cas9, which helps with delivery.

Doudna's 2017 book about gene editing, co-written with Samuel Sternberg, is titled what?

The Code Breaker is Walter Isaacson's 2021 biography of her.

Doudna supports somatic editing but not editing of what, where alterations pass to future generations?

She and other leading biologists called for a worldwide moratorium on clinical CRISPR use.

Mammoth Biosciences, co-founded by Doudna in 2017, focuses on which application of CRISPR?

It validated a rapid CRISPR-based COVID-19 test that was faster and cheaper than PCR.

How many samples did Doudna's Innovative Genomics Institute test during the pandemic?

Samples came from Berkeley students and staff, the surrounding community and farm workers in the Salinas area.

Doudna's Innovative Genomics Institute is a collaboration between Berkeley and which university?

It aims genome editing at problems in human health, agriculture and climate change.

Doudna received the Alan T. Waterman Award in 2000, the NSF's top honour for a researcher under what age?

It recognised her ribozyme structure work.

In 2015 Doudna and Charpentier shared which award in life sciences, funded by tech billionaires?

They also shared the Gruber, Tang, Japan, Kavli and Wolf prizes before the Nobel.

In 2021 Pope Francis appointed Doudna to which body?

Fellow laureates Donna Strickland and Charpentier were appointed alongside her.

Doudna was a runner-up for Time magazine's Person of the Year in which year?

She had already made the Time 100 in 2015 alongside Charpentier.

The Doudna supercomputer, announced in 2025, succeeds which Berkeley Lab machine?

Both are named for Berkeley Nobel laureates; Saul Perlmutter won the physics prize for the accelerating universe.

Doudna's husband, a fellow Berkeley professor, gene-edits which organism to boost biofuel production?

They married in 2000 and have a son studying electrical engineering and computer science.

Besides CRISPR, Doudna found that which virus uses an unusual strategy to make its proteins?

The finding could lead to drugs that stop infection without harming the body's own tissues.

Doudna was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in which year?

Arts and Sciences followed in 2003, Medicine in 2010 and Inventors in 2014.

Doudna was named the recipient of which American Chemical Society honour for 2026?

It is the ACS's highest honour; she also received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2025.

Who wrote the 2021 biography The Code Breaker about Doudna and gene editing?

Isaacson had earlier written biographies of Steve Jobs, Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci.

In which year did Doudna and Jamie Cate marry, in Hawaii?

They met at the University of Colorado, where Cate was a graduate student working on the ribozyme structure with her.

Doudna shared the 2018 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience with Charpentier and which Lithuanian biochemist?

Šikšnys independently characterised Cas9 cutting around the same time as the Doudna–Charpentier work.

Which investment firm did Doudna join in 2022 as chief science advisor?

The role guides investment decisions related to CRISPR technology.