About the Authors

MICHAEL M. COX was born in Wilmington, Delaware. After graduating from the University of Delaware, he went to Brandeis University to do his doctoral work with William P. Jencks, and then to Stanford for postdoctoral study with I. Robert Lehman. He is currently Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on recombinational DNA repair processes. Cox has received awards for both teaching and research, including the 1989 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry from the American Chemical Society and two major teaching awards from the University of Wisconsin. He has coauthored five editions of Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry.

JENNIFER A. DOUDNA grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii and became interested in chemistry and biochemistry in high school. She received her B.A. in biochemistry from Pomona College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University, working in the laboratory of Jack Szostak, with whom she also did postdoctoral research. She then went to the University of Colorado as a Lucille P. Markey scholar and postdoctoral fellow with Thomas Cech. Doudna is currently Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

MICHAEL O’DONNELL grew up in a neighborhood on the banks of the Columbia River outside Vancouver, Washington. He had several inspirational teachers at Hudson Bay High School who led him into science. He received his B.A. in biochemistry from the University of Portland and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he worked under Charles Williams, Jr., on electron transfer in the flavoprotein thioredoxin reductase. He performed postdoctoral work on E. coli replication with Arthur Kornberg and then on herpes simplex virus replication with I. Robert Lehman in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford University. O’Donnell is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at The Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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