Jennifer Doudna

Stories

CRISPR enters the photosynthesis frontier, targeting the oldest bottleneck in food production

As of May 2026: IGI leadership; not directly an author on this study

Plants have used the same photosynthesis machinery for hundreds of millions of years, converting just 1 to 2 percent of sunlight into energy. UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute has published a method using CRISPR edits to boost photosynthesis protein output by more than 30-fold without inserting foreign DNA.

Updated May 31

Off-the-shelf cancer cell therapy clears major regulatory hurdle toward replacing custom-made treatments

New Capabilities

As of May 2026: Scientific advisor; Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 for CRISPR-Cas9

Every approved cancer cell therapy today requires extracting a patient's own cells, engineering them in a lab, and infusing them back. It costs over $400,000 and sometimes takes weeks — long enough that patients' cancer can grow while they wait.

Updated May 30