Main content

A story of the discovery of genetic scissors that accidentally enabled fast gene editing. Presenter Adam Hart speaks with professor Jennifer Doudna and doctor Rodolphe Barrangou.

Having a fast and easy way to cut out and replace genes could revolutionise areas of biology as diverse as medicine and agriculture. And the discovery of the gene editing tool using CRISPR-cas9 makes that revolution a present reality. But the teams that revealed this gene editing tool piece by piece were not looking for anything to do with genetic engineering: instead they were curious to know more about how bacterial immunity works. Presenter Adam Hart speaks with Professor Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr Rodolphe Barrangou of North Carolina State University to reveal the story of how scientific curiosity can accidentally change the world.

Producer: Rory Galloway.

Available now

14 minutes

Last on

Tue 14 May 2019 09:30

Broadcasts

  • Fri 27 Jul 2018 13:45
  • Tue 14 May 2019 09:30