14
FEATURE
GENEWS
October 2020
Novel CRISPR snips itself a Nobel
S
ince the advent of the novel CRISPR technology, the world not only witnessed a cascade of events it has never seen before, but also hoped for what has never been envisioned. One would point out how the historical events in Genetics are as antiparallel as the DNA molecule. History narrates how in 1962, all laurels land on a duo of men who elucidated the doublehelix structure of the DNA, while the woman with the x-ray crystallography photograph integral to the success stay behind in the shadow. However, 58 years later, it is a true novelty in history for a duo of highly deserving women to earn the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of CRISPR, a novel technology for genome editing, while a man who had his fair share of contributing to the technology remain unrecognized. Some speculate the message sent by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences by awarding University of California, Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology’s Emmanuelle Charpentier the Nobel prize over Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Feng Zhang, since the award is large enough to have
by DANIEL VARIAS (Isochore) Zhang share the glory with the two women. Is this a decision to rectify history? In 2016, the Broad Institute’s President and founding director Eric Lander published an inaccurate article entitled “The Heroes of CRISPR” in the Cell journal, which claims that the men are solely responsible for discovering CRISPR/Cas9. The article places Zhang in the pedestal as the man of the hour, while downplaying the contribution of the women. History often narrates how women are often the hidden figures in science, such as the case for Rosalind Franklin of the DNA structure, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson of the Space Race, and other women devoid of glory for their contributions. With a groundbreaking decision to award the women over men along with the past records of gender imbalance in accolades, it is no wonder these speculations spring out. With the conflicting claims of patents between Doudna and Zhang, where Doudna is winning patents in EU while Zhang wins his in the US through Broad, some wonder whether the decision is for the legal system, thus a
political one. Some speculate that bioethics affected the decision, since Doudna and Charpentier use CRISPR in solutions while Zhang uses the technology in human samples, thus paving the way for “designer babies” or human genome editing. However, George Church, a Harvard University chemist who also works on CRISPR, believes that the committee prefers to reward discoveries rather than inventions, where Doudna and Charpentier are discoverers, while Zhang is an inventor. Recognizing and empowering two women in science, particularly in genetics, is a fresh, progressive sight in the year 2020. This shows the long path women have take in the field known to be dominated my men in history, and such feat shall continue to empower women to progress the field. Nevertheless, Doudna, in her unbothered self, modestly receives the award as she abruptly learned about the news post-slumber and currently enjoys the free parking space in UC, Berkeley as one of the perks of her achievement. Doudna and Charpentier’s achievement and its impacts,
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