Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

In the news

CRISPR–Cas9 wins Nobel

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 21, page 714 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

The ability to precisely edit genomic sequences has wide-ranging applications in basic research, biotechnology, agriculture and medicine. Although various strategies to edit DNA have been trialled starting from the 1960s, it wasn’t until 2012 when reliable, flexible and efficient genome editing technologies became a reality. That year, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna published their landmark paper describing the CRISPR–Cas9 system (Science, 17 Aug 2012). Reflecting the magnitude of their impact, these revolutionary discoveries have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (The Nobel Foundation, 7 Oct 2020).

Work in this field began with studies on bacterial CRISPR–Cas systems, which constitute a prokaryotic mechanism of anti-viral immunity. Essentially, in these systems, viral infection triggers the generation of CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs), which derive from DNA sequences that remain in the host genome after a previous viral infection and which guide DNA nucleases to cleave and destroy DNA of the re-invading pathogen. These systems can be quite complex, requiring multiple Cas proteins to generate crRNAs and cleave DNA. However, in 2011 Emmanuelle Charpentier discovered in Streptococcus pyogenes a new, much simpler mechanism for DNA cleavage by CRISPR–Cas, which involved only a single Cas nuclease, Cas9 (Nature, 30 March 2011).

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology http://www.nature.com/nrm/

    Paulina Strzyz

Authors
  1. Paulina Strzyz
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paulina Strzyz.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Strzyz, P. CRISPR–Cas9 wins Nobel. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 21, 714 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-020-00307-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-020-00307-9

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing