CIENCIASMEDICASNEWS: Pioneers of revolutionary CRISPR gene editing win chemistry Nobel

sábado, 10 de octubre de 2020

BRUSH UP ON YOUR NOBEL SCIENCE

It’s Nobel’s week! Half the fun of which is rediscovering the work that has taken home the prize this year — and the fascinating scientists behind it.

Microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and biochemist Jennifer Doudna shared the chemistry Nobel for developing the precise genome-editing technology CRISPR.

In a 2016 profile, colleagues describe Charpentier as tenacious, modest and “so resourceful, she could start a lab on a desert island,” according to her PhD supervisor Patrice Courvalin. As for the Nobel? “Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, warned that winning prizes turned you into an institution,” Charpentier said. “I am just trying to keep working and keep my feet on the ground.” (Nature | 12 min read, from 2016)
In 2015, Doudna wrote in Nature that the knock-on effects of her discovery were starting to keep her up at night. “I'd avoided thinking too much about the philosophical and ethical ramifications,” she wrote. “By the spring of 2014, I was regularly lying awake at night wondering whether I could justifiably stay out of an ethical storm that was brewing around a technology I had helped to create.” She called for deeper engagement with ethical issues by scientists and better education for up-and-coming researchers. (Nature | 9 min read, from 2016)
And what of the graduate students and postdocs who toiled at the bench to make CRISPR genome editing a reality? Nature reporter Heidi Ledford — who had the unexpected pleasure of breaking the news to Doudna in a 2 a.m. phone call — says that this 2016 feature on the unsung heroes of CRISPR is one of her favourites. (Nature | 10 min read, from 2015)

Virologists Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice shared the medicine Nobel for research on hepatitis C, the virus responsible for many cases of hepatitis and liver disease.

In 2016, spurred by the development of effective treatments for hepatitis C and expanding access to hepatitis B vaccination, the 194 member states of the World Health Organization committed to eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030. In 2017, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology explored areas that are vital to meeting this ambitious target, from basic viral research to public policy. (Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology | Collection of articles, from 2017)
Houghton has turned down high-profile awards because they didn’t acknowledge his collaborators, George Quo and Qui-Lim Choo. “It’s all based on the Nobel prize,” explained Houghton in 2013. “In his will, Dr. Nobel says there can be no more than three. All of the other major awards tend to copy that and limit it to three. It’s antiquated.” But he did accept this prize. “I think it would be really too presumptuous of me to turn down,” he said. (National Post | 5 min read, from 2013)

Ghez “is one of a rare adventurous class” of astronomers, said Genzel in a 2013 profile in Nature. Ghez is an enthusiastic early adopter of new astronomical tools who shares an infectious enthusiasm for the pleasures of physics. “I like the risk of a new technology,” said Ghez. “Any time you look, you're astounded!” (Nature | 11 min read, from 2013)
Penrose’s 1972 plain-language overview of black holes — when they were still very much a novelty — is still well worth reading. (Nature | 8 min read) And, despite some shaky camera work, Penrose’s 2018 Christmas lecture in London is just the thing to get you caught up with his work — and his delightful diagrams using lots of multicolored pens. (University of Westminster | 35 min video)