"Rewriting the code of life": Gene editing and the future of humanity

Rewriting the Code of Life, published by Omega Plus, is written by master biographer Walter Isaacson.

The book was a New York Times bestseller and was named best of the year by Time Magazine , The Washington Post , Smithsonian Magazine , Amazon, BookPage , and Science News .

In this 56-chapter book, Walter Isaacson tells the story of the people behind the "genetic scissors" that have brought life science into a new era.

"All the scientists I feature in this book say that their main motivation is not money, or even glory, but the opportunity to explore the mysteries of nature and use those discoveries to make the world a better place," the book reads.

The story begins when Jennifer Doudna - the female scientist who received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - was in 6th grade, returned home and found a book on her bed called DNA : The Journey to Discover the Double Helix .

As she flipped through the pages of the book, Doudna couldn't take her eyes off the race to discover the "code" of life and from there pursued her dream of becoming a female scientist.

She and her colleagues turned their curiosity about nature into an invention that could transform humanity: CRISPR-Cas9 — a technique with an unmemorable acronym that allows selective cutting and changing of pieces of DNA.

This landmark research builds on the defenses developed by bacteria in their billion-year-long battle against viruses, opening the door to humanity's ability to control future waves of viruses.

The invention also helps to head off pandemics by better screening and treatment, and even create people with strong immunity.

By telling the story of Jennifer Doudna, Walter Isaacson hopes to offer a different perspective on how science works and the dark corners of it.

What really happens in the lab? How much do discoveries depend on individual excellence, and how important is teamwork? Does competition for prizes and patents undermine scientific collaboration?

The New York Times once said that Rewriting the Code of Life could be considered "a chronicle of the pandemic year 2020".

"Isaacson does a great job of demonstrating the processes in science, including the role of chance.

The toil at the lab bench, the flashes of inspiration, the importance of workshops as creative gathering places, the rivalry – sometimes friendly, sometimes fierce – and the sense of common purpose are all captured in the book,” commented The Economist .