Simple explanation
Jennifer Doudna studies the shapes of molecules and what those shapes let them do. Working with Emmanuelle Charpentier, she showed that a bacterial defence protein called Cas9 could be aimed at any piece of DNA you chose, simply by giving it a matching RNA guide. That result turned an obscure feature of bacterial immunity into a tool used in essentially every biology laboratory in the world.
Go deeper
Jennifer Doudna is Professor of Chemistry and of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Her structural work on RNA catalysis and RNA-protein complexes led to the 2012 Jinek et al. paper with Emmanuelle Charpentier demonstrating programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA cleavage by Cas9 and the engineering of a single guide RNA. She founded the Innovative Genomics Institute and has been a persistent public voice on the ethics of human germline editing.
Major contributions
On the credit dispute
Priority over CRISPR genome editing has been contested for more than a decade, principally between the University of California and the Broad Institute over patents covering use in eukaryotic cells. The Nobel Committee recognised Doudna and Charpentier for the development of the method; the patent position in the United States has at points favoured the Broad. These are separate questions decided by separate bodies on separate criteria, and the Atlas does not attempt to resolve either.
Sources
- The Nobel Foundation · 2020
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 ↗ - Science (Jinek et al.) · 2012
A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity ↗