Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

  • Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer A Doudna of the USA were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
WHY FOR?
  • They were awarded for developing CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, which is one of gene technology’s sharpest tools.
  • It was for the first time that a Nobel science prize has gone to a women-only team.
  • The CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors can be used to change the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.
  • The CRISPR/Cas9 tool has already contributed to significant gains in crop resilience, altering their genetic code to better withstand drought and pests.
  • The technology has contributed to new cancer therapies.
CISPR TECHNOLOGY
  • The CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology for gene-editing was first developed in 2012.
  • It makes gene sequencing very easy, simple and extremely efficient providing nearly endless possibilities.
NOBEL IN CHEMISTRY
  • The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of ScienceS.
  • The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
  • The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands, "for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions".
  • There are only five other women, who have received the prize, the notable one and first one being Marie Curie who had received the honour in 1911 for the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium.
  • The last time a woman was awarded the prize was Frances H. Arnold in 2018.
INDIANS IN CHEMISTRY
  • India’s first Nobel Prize in the field of chemistry was won by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. 
  • He received the 2009 Nobel Prize “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”.

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