Although Crispr-related medical breakthroughs are currently attracting fervent attention, Doudna suspects that the technology will break through on a mass scale outside of the health care world. “I think many of us will experience Crispr in the agricultural world before we experience it clinically,” she says. “By the food we eat, and the environmental impact.”
The IGI has expanded its mission to include agricultural research, and Doudna is especially excited about an ongoing project her team is working on in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Davis to cut down the amount of methane cattle produce. In other words: It’s a project to make cow burps and farts pollute the air less. Not necessarily the most glamorous research, but it could prove revolutionary. “Being able to reduce or eliminate methane production in cattle would have an enormous impact on greenhouse gas production,” Doudna says. Ideally, researchers might develop a simple delivery system, like a probiotic drink, that could alter the cows’ methane production.
As she continues her research, Doudna is appreciative of moments when she can see how the work is already making a difference. “The reality for me came home when I met Victoria Gray,” she says. Gray, the first patient in the US to receive Crispr therapy for sickle cell disease, used to suffer from debilitating, chronic pain and fatigue because of her illness. Since she got the treatment, Gray has been able to enroll in business school and start a clothing company, pursuits she wasn’t well enough to do in the past. Doudna is heartened by how Gray’s case demonstrates the real-world impact of her research: “It completely transformed her life.”
Emily Mullin, Staff Writer at WIRED, and Jennifer Doudna speak onstage during The New Age of Medicine at LiveWIRED 2023.Photograph: Kimberly White/Getty Images