Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier share the 2020 Nobel chemistry prize for their development of a game-changing gene-editing technique. (Alexander Heinel/Picture Alliance/DPA)
CRISPR pioneers win chemistry Nobel
Two scientists who pioneered the revolutionary gene-editing technology CRISPR are the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna share the award for developing the tool that has inspired countless applications in medicine, agriculture and basic science. CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, is a microbial ‘immune system’ that prokaryotes — that is, bacteria and archaea — use to prevent infection by viruses called phages. In a landmark 2012 paper in Science, the duo adapted the system to function in a test-tube and showed that it could be programmed to cut specific sites in isolated DNA.
Nobel-prize predictions have often included CRISPR, but there has been debate over who would receive the award among the technology’s many contributors. The work also sparked a fierce patent battle that rumbles on to this day. One of those who might have shared the award today, geneticist George Church, thinks the committee made the right call: “I think it’s a great choice,” he says .
Nature | 6 min read
Nobel-prize predictions have often included CRISPR, but there has been debate over who would receive the award among the technology’s many contributors. The work also sparked a fierce patent battle that rumbles on to this day. One of those who might have shared the award today, geneticist George Church, thinks the committee made the right call: “I think it’s a great choice,” he says .
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