The Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Crispr’s inventors, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna

The Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their ability to “rewrite the code of life” to Emmanuelle Charpentier, French, and Jennifer Doudna, American. Crispr is a method for rewriting the bases of DNA that reached laboratories in the early 2000s. Since then, it has revolutionized the work of scientists, promising to cure many of the diseases that have a genetic basis. Some cancer trials are also being done. Since her arrival, there have also been ethical and controversial doubts, such as when two girls with a Crispr-modified genome were born in a Chinese laboratory.

Crispr is not yet (or nearly) used directly in humans. But over the last decade it has proven to be an enormously useful working tool for basic research applications, for creating animal models of human disease and for developing disease resistant plants, or for creating algae that produce biofuel. . While the United States does not consider Crispr-treated vegetables to be GMOs, the debate is ongoing in Europe. But certainly “only the imagination can set limits to its applications,” explained the academy to motivate the award. The method had also been at the center of a titanic fight for patents in recent years. Among the various protagonists, Stockholm has decided to reward the two researchers who have devoted the most time to research on Crispr, recognizing the work of two women who had started from basic research.

Jennifer Doudna was born in Washington and is 56 years old. He teaches at the University of Berkeley in California. Emmanuelle Charpentier was born in France in Juvisy-sur-Orge and is 52 years old. Today she runs Max Planck’s pathogen science unit in Berlin.

Crispr is a method invented in ancient times by bacteria to cut the genome of the viruses that invaded them. The “molecular scissors” observed in the Charpentier and Doudna laboratory are now used by researchers to carry out all kinds of interventions on the DNA of plants and animals. More prudence is used with man, because Crispr is not yet an error-free method.

The award is accompanied by a gold medal with the face of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and 940 thousand euros to be distributed among the winners. On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three scientists for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. On Tuesday, three black hole experts won the physics prize.

It is well known that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is considered a “useful” prize, which is intended for practical applications of science. Last year, for example, he turned to the scientists who allowed the construction of lithium-ion batteries. On Thursday it will be the turn of the Nobel Prize for Literature and on Friday that of Peace.