Simple explanation
Emmanuelle Charpentier studies how bacteria work. She discovered a small RNA molecule, tracrRNA, that turned out to be an essential part of how the CRISPR system functions, a piece nobody knew was needed. That discovery made the collaboration with Jennifer Doudna possible, and the two showed together that the system could be programmed.
Go deeper
Emmanuelle Charpentier is founding and scientific director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin. Her 2011 identification of trans-activating CRISPR RNA in Streptococcus pyogenes revealed a required component of type II CRISPR function; the subsequent collaboration with Doudna produced the 2012 demonstration of programmable Cas9 cleavage. She co-founded CRISPR Therapeutics, which went on to develop the first approved CRISPR medicine.
Sources
- The Nobel Foundation · 2020
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 ↗ - Nature (Deltcheva et al.) · 2011
CRISPR RNA maturation by trans-encoded small RNA and host factor RNase III ↗