The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to France’s Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna on Wednesday 7th  October 2020 for a genome editing tool that has transformed science by providing a way to alter DNA, the code of life technology already being used to cure a host of diseases, raise better crops and livestock.

 

France’s Emmanuelle Charpentier was born in 1968 and got her Ph.D in 1995 from Institute Pasteur, Paris, France while Jennifer A. Doudna who was born in 1964 in the Washington, D.C, obtained her Ph.D. in 1989 from Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. Göran K. Hansson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences secretary-general described the the Noble prize in Chemistry as “rewriting the code of life”

 

CRISPR-Cas9 is frequently likened to molecular scissors. CRISPR’s tremendous power is that it can find and cut just one.

The gene editor indicated that CRISPR-Cas9 is one such unexpected discovery with breathtaking potential. When Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna started investigating the immune system of a Streptococcus bacterium, one idea was that they could perhaps develop a new form of antibiotic. Instead, they discovered a molecular tool that can be used to make precise incisions in genetic material, making it possible to easily change the code of life.

They examined the resistant arrangement of a Streptococcus bacterium and found an atomic instrument that can be utilized to make exact cuts in hereditary material, making it conceivable to effortlessly change the code of life, the institute said.

During Dr. Charpentier’s investigation of Streptococcus pyogenes, she found a formerly obscure atom, tracrRNA. She demonstrated that atom to be important for microbes’ old safe framework, CRISPR/Cas, which incapacitates infections by separating their DNA. She distributed her disclosure in 2011 and began cooperating with Dr. Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley. They re-made the microbes’ hereditary scissors in a test tube and streamlined the scissors’ atomic segments to improve use case.

 

 

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