Washington: Emmanuelle Charpentier from Germany and Jennifer A. Doudna from USA have been awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday for “development of a method for genome editing”.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020
The recipients of Nobel Prize in Chemistry were announced Wednesday in Stockholm by Goran Hansson, Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In an official statement, the Acadmey said, “Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors”.
“Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true,” the statement read.
Charpentier, 51, and Doudna, 56, are just the sixth and seventh women to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million krona (more than $1.1 million).
The first time a woman was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry prize was in 1911 when Marie Curie, who also took the physics prize in 1903, won for discovering the elements radium and polonium.
Prize in Physiology, Medicine and Physics
Earlier on Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medicine to Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus.
On Tuesday, the prize for physics went to Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the United States for their breakthroughs in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes.