French Scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna have won the Nobel Prize 2020 in Chemistry. They had discovered a technique of Genome editing known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). CRISPR/ Cas9 is a genetic scissors and is one of the sharpest tools in gene technology. Charpentier is currently working as the Director of The Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin. Doudna is a professor at the University of California and also an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Goran Hansson, Secretary-General of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the names of the recipients. Charpentier and Doudna are the sixth and seventh women to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Nobel Laureates are awarded with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Krona.
With CRISPR, researchers are able to change the DNA of microorganisms, plants, animals and even in humans with extremely high precision. This technology has a revolutionary effect on the field of Life Science. Gene modification process is a time consuming and at times an impossible work. But with the arrival of CRISPR genetic scissors, the gene modification has become somewhat easier.
Story Of CRISPR:
Emmanuelle Charpentier discovered an unknown molecule called ‘tracrRNA‘ while studying ‘Streptococcus pyogene’ bacteria. Through her work, she showed that tracrRNA is a part of bacteria’s ancient immune system. CRISPR is a specialised region of DNA which was found in bacteria. It helps to keep a record of the past injury.
During an attack from a virus, the bacterium stores some parts of the viral genome of the virus within its own DNA. Later this bacterium can recognise the viral infections if they occur again. CRISPR deactivates the virus through cleaving its DNA. In 2011, Charpentier had published her innovation. And she collaborated with Doudna to recreate bacteria’s genetic scissors. Through further experimentation and reprogramming, it eventually proved that CRISPR can be controlled to cut any DNA molecule at a predetermined position.
Important Discoveries with CRISPR:
(i) Plant crops that withstand pest, mold(fungus) and drought was produced.(ii) In the medical field, new Cancer therapies were adopted. The dream of curing Inherited diseases is about to turn into reality. And also used in HIV therapy.
According to Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel committee for Chemistry, this genetic tool possesses enormous power which will affect all of us.
The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.
Isaac Asimov
CRISPR has changed the face of research through rewriting the code of life. Let’s hope for a disease free world in future through CRISPR.
References: http://www.nobelprize.org/
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