CRISPR researchers Charpentier and Doudna win chemistry Nobel Prize

Illustration of womon in lab coat holding scissors and a large DNA strand cut in places; to the right the DNA trails off, below an X chromosome, C Johnan Jarnestad/The Roual Swedish Academy of Sciences

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, for their work in developing the microbial immune system into genome editing tools. Their groundbreaking 2012 Science paper showed that CRISPR-Cas9 could be be engineered and programmed with RNA guides for targeted, site-specific DNA cleavage. In the paper they also further simplified the CRISPR-Cas9 complex. Unlike the multi-subunit Type I and Type III systems, the CRISPR-Cas9 complex has a single protein and two RNAs: tracrRNA and crRNA. By combining the two RNAs to create a single guide RNA, they made the system even more amenable to use as a molecular biology tool.

In the short time since this paper was published, CRISPR-based tools have rapidly advanced and expanded, touching nearly all aspects of molecular biology. 

Congratulations Emmanuelle and Jennifer on this well-deserved honor!

Sarah Studernews