Winners of Canada’s Gairdner Awards in 2016. (L-to-R): Anthony Fauci, Zhang, Charpentier, Rodolophe Barrangou, Doudna, and Philippe Horvath.
Base editing and more: David Liu in his office at the Broad Institute, under the watchful eye of Tony Stark. Courtesy of Juliana Sohn, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
First authors: Alexis Komor and Nicole Gaudelli, former postdocs in the Liu lab, in Victoria, British Columbia, February 2019.
Base adjustment: the first base editors developed in the Liu lab perform chemistry directly on DNA (see chapter 22). The cytosine base editor (CBE) is a three-component molecular machine that converts cytosine to guanine (via uridine). The adenine base editor (ABE) catalyzes the transition of adenine to thymine (via inosine).
Pope Francis urges caution in applying CRISPR during an address at the Vatican in April 2018. Courtesy of the Cura Foundation.
Senator Elizabeth Warren quizzes former Editas CEO Katrine Bosley and Stanford University’s Matthew Porteus at a U.S. Senate committee hearing (November 2017).
Lap-Chee Tsui, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, greets the author prior to the start of Hong Kong summit on genome editing, November 2018.
Feng Zhang discusses the potential of CRISPR to treat a wide spectrum of genetic diseases at the Hong Kong conference.
He Jiankui details the results of editing the DNA of Lulu and Nana, the CRISPR twins, at the Hong Kong summit, November 2018. Courtesy of William Kearney/U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
CCR5 variants: on the left, the structure of the normal CCR5 receptor and the Δ32 variant; on the right, the variants in Lulu and Nana (abnormal amino-acid sequences in red). Courtesy of Sean Ryder/The CRISPR Journal.
Meet the press: More than 200 photographers await the arrival of He Jiankui at the Hong Kong summit. Courtesy of William Kearney/U.S. National Academy of Sciences. On the right, Robin Lovell-Badge in the middle of a media scrum.
Home alone: He Jiankui spotted on a balcony in Shenzhen while under house arrest in December 2018. Courtesy of Elsie Chen.
David Sanchez, who has sickle-cell disease, sees hope for a cure in CRISPR. Courtesy of Derek Reich/Human Nature.
Dame Kay Davies (University of Oxford), co-chair of an international commission on heritable genome editing, with the author (no relation).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
But for a friendly chat over a pint at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory bar, this book might never have happened. My former Nature colleague Alex Gann regaled me about his plans to write a book following receipt of a fellowship from an unexpected source. I took note and eighteen months later, submitted a proposal to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to write a book about CRISPR. In 2017, I was delighted to receive a Guggenheim fellowship in science writing, which supplied the initial validation and impetus to pull this book together.
Profound thanks to my colleagues Mary Ann Liebert and Marianne Russell for their unwavering support in launching The CRISPR Journal in 2018. This wonderful opportunity propelled me into the CRISPR community and cover many key events and meetings, including the 2018 summit in Hong Kong, which proved a turning point in the story. Thanks also to my colleagues Bill Levine, Sophie Reisz, John Sterling, Chris Anderson, and the rest of the Liebert team.
I’ve leaned heavily on the superb reporting of a large group of science writers and journalists. They include Antonio Regalado, Sharon Begley, Jon Cohen, Ryan Cross, David Cyranoski, Lisa Jarvis, Julianna LeMieux, Marilynn Marchione, Amy Maxmen, Megan Molteni, Emily Mullin, Michael Specter, Rob Stein, Ed Yong, Sarah Zhang, and Carl Zimmer. And special thanks to Walter Isaacson for his gratifying encouragement.
Several actors in this drama deserve special thanks. Fyodor Urnov’s insights, bons mots, and Russian proverbs are sprinkled throughout this book. He’s forgotten more about genome editing than I’ll ever know, and in the family tradition, really should write a book. Rodolphe Barrangou, with whom I’ve worked closely for the past three years; he has been a superb ambassador for CRISPR, and supplied me with numerous insights and opinions, not all of which, sadly, could be included. Samira Kiani, Nicholas Shadid, and Cody Sheehy supplied fascinating insights about germline editing and research in China. Kiran Musunuru generously shared a copy of his book before publication. And Jacob Sherkow continues to be the consummate guide to the ongoing patent drama.
Thanks also to Dana Carroll, Emmanuelle Charpentier, George Church, Le Cong, Kevin Esvelt, Ryan Ferrell, Nicole Gaudelli, Michael Gilmore, Philippe Horvath, Martin Jínek, Alexis Komor, David Liu, Steve Lombardi, Luciano Marraffini, Francisco Mojica, Ann Ran, Virginijus Šikšnys, Erik Sontheimer, Ross Wilson, and Andrew Wood, for their expertise. I am in awe of their talent and tip my hat to all the heroes, sung and unsung, of the CRISPR revolution. (The full interviews with some of these individuals can be found in my Guidepost podcast series, available on all popular podcast platforms.)
Laurie Goodman and Bette Phimister critiqued drafts of the manuscript with unseemly satisfaction, and T.J. Cradick and Tim Hunt provided much valuable feedback. Thanks to Oona Snoyenobos-West, a fiercely talented microbiologist, for insisting that I write a book on CRISPR (and reminding me that microbes aren’t “primitive”!). Martin Koubek kindly supplied the Czech translations. And thanks to Ardy Arianpour, Judy Chen, Pauline Parry, and Amanda Wren for their invaluable encouragement. Any errors that remain (editing or otherwise) are mine alone.
I am perpetually grateful to my agent Jennifer Gates at Aevitas Creative, who steered me to Jessica Case and Pegasus. Jessica’s been a true partner in this project and as patient and collegial an editor as I could have wished for. Thanks also to the fabulous Maria Fernandez for typesetting and the rest of the Pegasus team, including Drew Wheeler (copyediting) and Daniel O’Connor (proofreading). Mon Oo Yee supplied her trademark artistic flourish for the cover. Thanks also to the kind folks who supplied photos, including Adam Bolt, Elsie Chen, Eriona Hysolli, Dana Korsen, Lee McGuire, and Hiroshi Nishimasu.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my friend Michael White, who died in Perth, Australia, in 2018. Without Mike, I wouldn’t have made my first record (with Colour Me Pop) or written my first book. Finally, my love and gratitude to my children and my wife Susan, without whose love and support (and bonus proof-reading) this book would never have happened.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KEVIN DAVIES is the executive editor of The CRISPR Journal and the founding editor of Nature Genetics. He holds an MA in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of London. He is the author of Cracking the Genome and The $1,000 Genome, and co-authored a new edition of DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution with Nobel Laureate James D. Watson and Andrew Berry. In 2017, Kevin was selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship in science writing.