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He has already been awarded the Warren Alpert Prize from Harvard University for his discovery of so-called “molecular genetic scissors” and, along with this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the prestigious Kavli Prize awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences.
Although the world’s most cited scientific journal Nature notes that J. Doudna and E. Charpentier and their colleagues certainly deserve an award for the discovery of gene editing technology, several other researchers are also mentioned as key contributors to their creation: VU Biochemist V George Church, researcher at Harvard University, and Dr. Mass., Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Fengas Zhangas.
The influential business publication Forbes also notes that, for the first time in history, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared this year by a team of female scientists, but VU scientist prof. V. Šikšnys.
The MIT website Technologyreview.com raises the question why it was decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to just two scientists, as the award can generally be awarded to teams of up to three scientists. Honorable third place here could potentially be held by V. Šikšnys and F. Zhang, who made similar discoveries and were among the first to show that CRISPR-Cas9 technology can be used in human cells. It is agreed that although Ms Charpentier and Ms Doudna have done very important work to make CRISPR-Cas9 technology a working tool, in 2012 at the same time V. Šikšnys independently demonstrated that DNA cleavage by the Cas9 protein can be used for programmed genome editing.
Already in 2018. Science magazine noted that V. Šikšnis Group in 2011 the first in the world to demonstrate that the CRISPR-Cas9 system can be transferred from one bacterium to another and that Cas9 is the only protein in the system necessary for them to bacteria provide protection against viruses.
The German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel is also critical of the fairness of the world of science and emphasizes that, unfortunately, it is sometimes easier and faster to recognize significant scientific discoveries if they are made in the laboratories of world-renowned universities.
The newspaper recalls that Professor VU V. Šikšnys was the world’s first researcher. After describing his work on the potential of the CRISPR-Cas9 system, the editorial team of the prestigious journal Cell rejected his manuscript (the editorial board later admitted that he was wrong because the article had great scientific value). A month later, the researcher sent the manuscript of his article to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, where it was published three months later. Unfortunately, V. Šikšnys was no longer the first. E. Charpentier and J. Doudna, who submitted their manuscripts to the Science editorial office after V. Šiksnys, were the first to publish their work.
CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which has been developed and developed by teams of at least 4-5 scientists, allows extremely precise editing of organisms’ DNA. This opens up opportunities to treat human genetic diseases or to develop new varieties of plants and animals. In the future, this technology is expected to cure the most complex diseases, including AIDS induced by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Down syndrome and inherited heart defects. Additionally, this technology is already being used in agriculture, with plans to develop plant varieties that are resistant to drought or other adverse soil conditions.
Thus, this revolutionary discovery was made simultaneously in the laboratories of at least two world universities, including Vilnius University. Virginia Šikšnis’s research can rightly qualify as part of this year’s Nobel Prize.
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