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In a year when COVID-19 vaccines were developed and distributed and the debt we owe to science was clearer than ever, it was an ideal moment to read about Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist who played a major role in one of the other key breakthroughs of recent decades: CRISPR gene editing. Walter Isaacson, a former editor of TIME and the best-selling biographer of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, among other figures, is a master of conveying complex ideas in accessible prose and constructing immensely readable narratives. In his latest, the author captures the ways in which Doudna’s discovery is already shaping our world and its promise for the future.
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