TS Picks: May 13, 2015

FLICKR, MARK MILLER

Selections from The Scientist’s reading list:
 

• The New York Times (NYT) this week (May 11) examined the work of CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, the biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is in the midst of a patent dispute regarding the genome-editing technology and a debate centered on its ethical usage. “I really want to see this technology used to help people,” Doudna told NYT. “It would be a shame if the I.P. situation would block that.”
   
• Optogenetics pioneer Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, is an avid reader and writer of fiction, according to a The New Yorker profile published online yesterday (May 18). Deisseroth, who is currently working on a collection of short stories, said that, as with science, writing is about “seeing the truth—trying to get to the heart of things with words...