Two women have been awarded the 2020 Nobel prize in chemistry for the discovery of the CRISPR genetic scissors used to edit the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A Doudna will share the 10m Swedish kronor (£870,000) prize announced on Wednesday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm – the first time that two women have shared the prize.
The researchers won the prize for CRISPR Genetic Scissors “for the development of a method for genome editing”, according to the formal citation from the Nobel committee.
On Monday, two Americans and a British virologist won the medicine prize for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, paving the way for sensitive tests and antiviral drugs to cure the blood-borne infection.
Yesterday, an American astronomer, a German astrophysicist and a British mathematician, Sir Roger Penrose, shared the physics prize for their work on black hole formation and the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Originally published by The Guardian