Nobel Prize For Chemistry 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna Jointly Awarded For "Development Of Genome Editing Method"

Nobel Prize For Chemistry 2020: Chemistry Laureates Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools - CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors.

Emmanuelle Charpentier And Jennifer Doudna Jointly Awarded Nobel Prize For Chemistry 2020. (Image: The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize / Twitter)

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 to French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer A. Doudna for "for the development of a method for genome editing." The prestigious award includes a gold medal and prize money of 10 million krona (more than $1.1 million). The award-giving body in a tweet on Wednesday said that the Chemistry Laureates Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools - CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.

Born in 1964 in Washington DC (USA), Jennifer A. Doudna is a professor at Berkeley University of California USA and an Investigator at HHMI News. Emmanuelle Charpentier, the other recipient of the this year’s Nobel Chemistry Prize, was born in 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. She is Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the first half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to Roger Penrose and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez. In the field of Physiology or Medicine, the Nobel Prize 2020 has been awarded to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus. The other prizes are for outstanding work in the fields of literature, peace and economics. The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday in Sweden while the Nobel Peace Prize 2020 for literature will be announced on Friday. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science will be announced next Monday.