Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to 2 Scientists for Work on Genome Editing

[View the latest updates to the 2020 Nobel Prize winners list.]

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded on Wednesday to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing.

“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” Goran K. Hansson, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said as he announced the names of the laureates.

Professor Charpentier and Professor Doudna discovered the Crispr-Cas9 tool, a kind of genetic scissors that allows researchers to change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.