Jennifer Doudna

The essence of being human is that we solve problems.

And when we're faced with enormous problems like disease and climate change, we need to solve them by collaboration.

I'm excited to tell you about a new kind of collaboration that will absolutely create solutions to these big problems.

It's a collaboration that's unexpected because it's between humans and the tiniest organisms that populate our planet, the bacteria and other microbes that live in, on and around us.

Bacteria may be small and unseen, but they often have inspired transformative innovations, including the one that has become the cornerstone of my own research.

Over the past decade, I've been at the forefront of developing a revolutionary technology called CRISPR,

that has come from the study of how bacteria fight viral infection.

CRISPR is amazing because it allows us to precisely edit the DNA in living organisms, including in people and plants.

With CRISPR, we can change, remove or replace the genes that govern the function of cells.

This means that we now have the ability to use CRISPR like a word processor to find, cut, and paste text.

CRISPR, amazingly, has already cured people of devastating disorders like sickle cell disease, and it's created rice plants that are resistant to both diseases and drought.

Incredible, right?

But the next world-changing advance with CRISPR will actually come from editing genes beyond just in individual organisms.

we now have the ability to use CRISPR to edit entire populations of tiny microbes called microbiomes that live in and on our bodies.

For decades, scientists studied bacteria one organism at a time, as if each type of bacteria behaved independently.

But we now know that bacterial behaviors, both good and bad, result from their interactions within complex microbiomes.

In humans, dysfunctional gut microbiomes are associated with diseases as diverse as Alzheimer's and asthma.

And in farm animals, microbiomes produce methane, a powerful contributor to climate change.

But when they're healthy, both human and animal microbiomes can actually prevent disease and reduce methane emissions.

So to harness these benefits, we need a way to precisely and reproducibly control these microbial communities.