[ad_1]
Chemie-Nobelpreisträgerinnen 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier und Jennifer Doudna.
© MIGUEL RIOPA
Stockholm – The two biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier (France) and Jennifer Doudna (United States) received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for developing a method to process the genome”, specifically the CRISPR / Cas9 gene scissors. This was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday. The pioneering new method developed by the two scientists has been a Nobel Prize winner for several years.
📽️ Video | The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is for two researchers
The Nobel Committee described the genetic scissors developed by Charpentier and Doudna as a “tool to rewrite the code of life.” With it, researchers could change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with the greatest precision. “This technology has had a revolutionary influence on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and could make the dream of curing inherited diseases a reality,” the statement said.
To understand life, genetics also needs “tools to make changes in it.” This is exactly what the two researchers provided, noted the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Claes Gustafsson. For him, the findings contain “enormous power, which we must use with great care,” said the scientist when announcing the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which is shared exclusively by women.
📽️ Video | Günther Mayr (ORF) on the Nobel Prize:
Charpentier “surprised” by an “unreal” call
Although Charpentier and Doudna were the favorites for the Nobel Prize, Charpentier was initially “surprised” by the “unreal” call of the Nobel Committee. In conversation he recalled that on the way from his long-term workplace in Vienna to Umea (Sweden), he “really decided” to focus on genetic scissors. Then he went to Sweden because he assumed there was an understanding of “what I want to do” there. But work began in Vienna in 2007, he said.
Emmanuelle Charpentier arbeitete jahrelang in Wien.
© KIMBERLY WHITE
Charpentier, founding director of the Max Planck Research Center for the Science of Pathogens, worked from 2002 to 2009 at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, where she carried out a part relevant to genetic development work. Scissors made. The researcher once said that she had a “Eureka moment” in Vienna to see how gene scissors work. Due to lack of career prospects, among other things, she transferred to Umea University in 2009. In 2012, she and Doudna, who works at the University of California at Berkeley (USA), published instructions for the shear mechanism in the journal Science.
Doudna reacted “really stunned and completely shocked” to the award ceremony. “I grew up in a small town in Hawaii and could never have imagined in a million years that this would happen,” he told the journal Nature.
Charpentier described the road to the influential joint publication as extremely busy. The process was “truly a unique moment.” The authors would have exchanged ideas most of the day. This also included Krzysztof Chylinski, who was once a doctoral student in Charpentier’s laboratory in Vienna and was instrumental in the experiments on the CRISPR / Cas9 system, and who is still working at the Vienna Biocenter today. “We were up all day and all night,” Charpentier said.
She has always tried to create the prerequisites “to make genetics useful” and “to provide tools to better understand human diseases,” said the scientist, describing her motivation. Now they hope that genetic scissors will also be used to fight diseases.
“Very strong signal” for young women
Charpentier hoped the award would go to two women this year as a “very strong signal” for young women. It shows that “women scientists can also win great prizes.”
The use of “one of the sharpest tools in genetic engineering,” according to the Nobel Committee, has literally exploded in recent years. Genetic scissors have contributed to many important discoveries in basic research, one is able to develop crops that resist mold, pests and drought. In medicine, clinical trials are underway with new cancer therapies and the dream of being able to cure inherited diseases is about to be fulfilled. “This genetic gap has brought the life sciences into a new era and, in many ways, brings the greatest benefits to humanity,” Stockholm stressed.
© APA
Regardless of the basic work that was once performed in Vienna, Austrian institutions also see themselves to some extent as contributors to innovation: Charpentier’s former workplace, now called Max Perutz Laboratories (MPL), was delighted to that there was “the basis for the revolutionary application of the CRISPR-Cas9-Systems”. For the scientific director of the MPL, Alwin Köhler, the gene scissors are “one of the most revolutionary events in molecular biology”.
He described the fact that Charpentier is no longer in Vienna as a disappointment: “But mobility is now part of the investigation.” The Charpentier and Doudna success story is also a “wonderful example” that the results are much less plannable than many in the research community believe and a good case for investing in basic research, as Koehler told the APA. FWF Science Fund President Klement Tockner also congratulated Charpentier. The award crowns an outstanding academic career “which has also taken her to Austria for several years and in which the FWF Science Fund was able to provide significant support.”
This year the award is endowed with ten million Swedish crowns (about 950,000 euros). The award is presented each year on December 10, the anniversary of the death of founder Alfred Nobel. (WHAT)
Nobel laureates in chemistry since 2010
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which has been awarded since 1901, went mainly to American researchers. The Dutchman Jacobus van’t Hoff received the first prize for his discovery of the laws of osmosis. In 2013, the American researcher Martin Karplus, expelled from Austria by the Nazis, received the prestigious award together with Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. The winners of the last ten years are:
2019: The American researcher John Goodenough, the British Stanley Whittingham and the Japanese Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries.
2018: The American Frances Arnold, her compatriot George Smith and the British Gregory Winter have developed methods with which it is possible to produce, for example, biofuels, drugs and therapeutically active antibodies in an environmentally friendly way.
2017: The Swiss Jacques Dubochet, the German-American Joachim Frank and the British Richard Henderson for cryoelectron microscopy. This allows biomolecules to be examined in detail; shows, for example, three-dimensional images of proteins.
2016: The French Jean-Pierre Sauvage, the British James Fraser Stoddart and the Dutch Bernard Feringa. They built artificial muscles and a mini car from a few molecules.
2015: Tomas Lindahl (Sweden), Paul Modrich (United States) and Aziz Sancar (United States / Turkey), who described the genetic repair kits. These findings are used, among other things, to search for anticancer drugs.
2014: The German Stefan Hell and the Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner for the invention of super-resolution microscopes. This allows you to look inside living cells and observe processes in diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
2013: Martin Karplus (US), Michael Levitt (US / Great Britain) and Arieh Warshel (US / Israel) for methods with which even complex chemical reactions can be virtually reproduced.
2012: Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka from the USA for the discovery of receptors that transmit numerous signals from outside to the cells of the body.
2011: Dan Shechtman (Israel), who discovered quasicrystals that many chemists previously thought were impossible.
2010: Richard Heck (USA) and the Japanese Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, who produced complex substances from carbon. Among other things, they recreated natural active ingredients against cancer.
