Photo: Bianca Fioretti, Hallbauer & Fioretti — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Emmanuelle Charpentier
born 1968 · France · Born 1940 or later
Nobel Chemistry 2020
Discovered tracrRNA and co-developed CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing with Jennifer Doudna.
Nobel-winning work
While studying the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes, Charpentier discovered tracrRNA, the previously unknown RNA that guides the CRISPR–Cas9 system. In 2012 she and Jennifer Doudna showed that the Cas9 enzyme can be programmed with a single guide RNA to cut any chosen DNA sequence, turning a bacterial immune system into a universal gene-editing tool.