Credit: Justin Knight, McGovern Institute
Since it’s start in the early 2010’s, CRISPR has taken the world by storm. It has leaked out of the scientific community and into mainstream media, where the technology is a buzzword that excites visions of a sci-fi future. As the popularity and potential for this innovation only seems to grow, it becomes important not just to explore the science of CRISPR, but the history behind it—and few have contributed as much to this history as Feng Zhang.
Born in China, Feng Zhang moved to Des Moines, Iowa, at age eleven. There, he would go to Theodore Roosevelt High School. His journey in genetics began at a local lab, where he experimented with GFP (green fluorescent protein) and its possibilities in UV protection. After high school, he attended college at Harvard and graduate school at Stanford, where he would play a key role in the development of optogenetics—a method of manipulating neurons still used today. His contribution included injecting genes for a light-sensitive protein into the genomes of neurons. These proteins would, when stimulated by light, activate a neuron and affect the behavior of an animal in a way that illuminated its function in the brain.
Following graduate school, Feng Zhang was given a position in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, and after this secured a position at MIT and the Broad Institute. It was at the Broad that Zhang heard of something called “CRISPR”.
At this point, the literature behind CRISPR was yet to recognize the sequence’s full potential in combination with the Cas protein. The strange repeated DNA sequence was initially found by Yoshizumi Ishino in E. coli, and later research revealed the sequence was present in several prokaryotes and archaeans. It’s genomic capabilities, once discovered, were used for the rather unimpressive role of 'making yogurt taste better' by killing the viruses within—it was in this context that Zhang first found CRISPR.
After reading the literature behind CRISPR, Zhang decided to partner up with graduate student Le Cong and begin working on a new gene-editing technology. Importantly, the research Cong and Zhang were conducting took place not only in vivo (within living cells) but in the cells of humans and mice in order to ensure medical relevance. The pair’s work culminated in a 2013 research paper on the subject.
Unbeknownst to him, Zhang and Cong weren’t alone in the race for CRISPR. Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel Charpentier—two scientists you might know as the 2020 Nobel laureates in chemistry—had already published a paper on CRISPR gene-edits the year before. Because Doudna and Charpentier’s paper only applied CRISPR to test tube solutions, Zhang went ahead with his own article.
As the use of CRISPR has become widespread in the scientific community, both pairs’ claim to a patent for the technology has sparked a battle for the future of CRISPR gene editing. This battle rages on even now, and those that object to Zhang’s claim on the patent argue that though Zhang’s patent was approved first, he had filed his request later than Doudna and Charpentier. MIT had paid a $70 fee to accelerate review and Zhang’s patent was approved first, though the final decision as to who controls CRISPR is still ongoing.
In light of the recent pandemic, Feng Zhang’s company, Sherlock Biosciences, and Jennifer Doudna’s Mammoth Biosciences have turned their attention to using CRISPR in developing cheap, rapid, and easily usable testing. Though there is some competition underlying this race for CRISPR-based COVID19 tests, it is secondary to both company’s commitment to saving lives and staving off the pandemic. Sherlock and Mammoth Biosciences have made much of their COVID19 research public, signifying a commitment towards public health in this vital time.
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