On the cutting edge of science

When Jennifer Doudna left Hilo in 1981 to attend Pomona College in California, the field of biology was different. The AIDS virus hadn’t been discovered. The human genome wasn’t sequenced.

But there’s been a revolution in biology during the past several decades as scientists gain better understanding of DNA, RNA and the enzymes that build organisms from scratch. Doudna, now 51 and a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley, is part of that shake-up.

Her recent research on gene-editing techniques, done in partnership with Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier of Umea University in Sweden, earned her a $3 million Breakthrough Award in Life Sciences last year. The technique, called Crispr-Cas9 for the bacterial structure (Crispr) and protein (Cas9) it uses, allows scientists to generate breaks in cell structures, which the cells then repair.

“It gives scientists a very accurate way to change the genomic DNA sequences,” Doudna said. Crispr-Cas9 can be used to study the effects of genetic mutations, and even fix those mutations. The non-science world has taken note.

“There’s been a big uptick of interest over the past months because of the potential it has to do wonderful things to help human society,” Doudna said. “This is really an awesome tool in every sense of the word.”

In April, the same research earned Doudna and Charpentier spots on TIME magazine’s annual list of 100 most influential people. They’re listed in the Pioneers category.

Being a pioneer wasn’t Doudna’s plan when she was a student at Kaumana Elementary and Hilo High. She just wanted to understand the world around her.

The family moved to Hilo from Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1971 after Doudna’s father, Martin, took a job teaching English at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

“When we first moved there, I really remember how different it was from where I had been before,” Doudna recalled. “Things like Suisan — that was very fun.”

She liked exploring outdoors, and began to get a sense of what a future career could be while in chemistry and biology classes at Hilo High.

“No one in my family was drawn to science, but I was really intrigued by figuring out how the world works by doing experiments,” she said.

During her junior year, Hilo High sponsored a program bringing scientists from across the state to speak with students. Marine biologists discussed their research, and astronomers talked about the vast night skies, but something much smaller captured Doudna’s attention. A woman from the UH cancer center presented her work, detailing processes that took place at the molecular level.

“I was so fascinated by her work,” Doudna said. I want to do that, she thought; that’s exactly what I want to do.

She went off to Pomona because they had a biochemistry major and because it came highly recommended by two alums, Robert and Sue Irvine of Hilo, who were family friends. Both were former biology teachers; Robert now is an orthopedic surgeon.

“I really credit various experiences I had in Hilo with my choices that led to this career,” Doudna said.

Throughout her career, her choices also have been guided by sheer curiosity.

That’s what led her to focus on the ins and outs of RNA as a doctoral student at Harvard. It’s what led her to tackle determining its structure once she became a postdoctoral fellow and later, a Yale faculty member (she met husband Jamie Cate at Yale; they have one son).

At the time Doudna started her research, nobody knew what RNA looked like. Some thought it was stringy like spaghetti. Doudna suspected otherwise, but, she said, “It had to be figured out, tested.” In the lab, she and her fellow researchers began trying to pin down a shape via X-ray crystallography.

During the final stages of the testing and imaging process in 1995, when the problem was close to being solved, Doudna’s father was diagnosed with melanoma. She flew back to Hilo three times that fall to visit.

Martin Doudna died in December, but his daughter still had the chance to show him her first major discovery: the structure of RNA wasn’t floppy or stringy at all, but a folded three-dimensional structure.

“I really treasured that,” she said. “Something I always shared with my dad was this passion for what we were doing in our professional work, a passion for discovery. It meant a lot to share that.”

“I think he knew that I was kind of launched,” Doudna said.

Twenty years later, she hasn’t lost any of that professional passion. Science still is at its core a creative process, and Doudna, as the chief of her own lab at Berkeley, thinks she has a responsibility to help the next generation of researchers on their way to discovery.

It’s humbling, she says, and it’s what she enjoys most about the job.

The lab researchers have varying levels of expertise — postdoctoral fellows work there, but sometimes high-schoolers do, too — and come from all over the world. Science is a global endeavor, Doudna said.

“From my upbringing in Hilo, I really came to appreciate multiculturalism — bringing … different perspectives to whatever I was doing,” she said. “I loved learning about differing kinds of cultures and traditions.”

In Doudna’s field, there always are new perspectives to consider and new questions to be asked. With the discovery of the Crispr-Cas9 technique, many of these now center on bioethics.

“I’ve been very involved in the conversation about those,” Doudna said. “We need to understand better how this protein functions and how we can think about applying it.” She noted Crispr-Cas9’s potential to serve as a therapeutic tool and its broad application across the realms of biology. It could affect everything from molecular biology to agriculture.

“I really feel strongly that one has to be open to ideas and opportunities that you weren’t expecting,” Doudna said. “The more we know, the more we … realize we don’t know. I never feel like, ‘Well, I’m done.’”

Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.