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[View the latest updates to the 2020 Nobel Prize winners list.]
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded Wednesday to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their 2012 work on the development of Crispr-Cas9, a method for genome editing. The announcement marks the first time that two women have been awarded a Nobel Prize in science.
“This year’s award is about rewriting the code of life,” said Goran K. Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announcing the names of the winners.
Dr. Charpentier and Dr. Doudna, the sixth and seventh women to receive the chemistry award, pioneered the first work on Crispr-Cas9, a kind of genetic scissors that allows researchers to alter the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. . Since then, it has been used in numerous scientific applications, from genetic modification of crops to the development of ongoing cures for conditions such as sickle cell anemia and inherited blindness.
Fast, efficient and inexpensive, Crispr “solves problems in all fields of biology,” said Angela Zhou, CAS information scientist at the American Chemical Society.
“This technology has completely transformed the way we do basic science research,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “I am delighted to see Crispr-Cas get the recognition we have all been waiting for and to see two women be recognized as Nobel laureates.
While the two scientists developed Crispr for general use, some of the specific applications of the system have been caught up in thorny ethical debates about the genetic alteration of human embryos. In 2018, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, announced that he had used technology to edit the genes of two babies in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV. Dr. He’s experiments were called by many in the scientific community irresponsible and dangerous. because of the risk that the children have suffered side effects of the procedure, as well as the lack of transparency of Dr. He.
Claes Gustafsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: “There is enormous power in this genetic tool, which affects us all.”
Who are the winners?
Dr. Charpentier, who is French, is the director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. Dr. Doudna (the first syllable that rhymes with strong) is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the third and fourth women to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in the 21st century, among more than 50 laureates.
Dr. Charpentier said she was “happy” to be one of the few female recipients of the award, and hoped the victory would inspire young women to “follow the path of science.” The joint victory between two women in academic disciplines still dominated by men, she added, “can provide a really strong message for young women.”
Dr. Charpentier, 51, and Dr. Doudna, 56, met at a café in Puerto Rico in 2011 on the sidelines of a conference they were both attending, the Nobel committee said. They first published their discovery of the Crispr-Cas 9 genetic scissors in 2012.
Who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino were recognized for research on lithium-ion batteries that has “laid the foundation for a fossil-fuel-free and wireless society,” according to the award committee.
