Nordic Life Science 1
worked at ten different institutes. In an intervi
ew with Max Planck Institute she said that leaving different places also means constantly leaving her comfort zone, scrutinizing and tweaking her own work. Emmanuelle Charpentier has focused most of her scientific career on understanding the fundamental mechanisms of diseases, with a particular focus on infections caused by Gram-positive bacterial pathogens. In 2002, when she got the opportunity to start her own research group at the University of Vienna, she studied streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), one of our most harmful bacteria, and she began investigating how its genes are regulated. In 2009 she had the opportunity to go to Umeå, in the north of Sweden, and become Group Leader at the Laboratory of Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), at Umeå University. She remained there until 2013 and between 2014 and 2017 she was Visiting Professor MIMS, Umeå University. In an interview with Swedish Television (2020) she said that she liked the fact that it was way up north and quite dark, as she would be able to fully focus on her science and could spend hour after hour doing that and not getting bored. “I thought that it was interesting that there was a desire among the Nordic countries to really drive research in infection biology at Umeå University,” Charpentier said in an interview with Swedish Television, 2020. In the same interview she sad that Umeå University stands out as a model for encouraging young leaders and giving them the opportunity and support to pursue research on knowledge gap projects for many years, like her own choice of research area. In Umeå Charpentier examined small, gene-regulating RNA molecules. Working with researchers in Berlin, she mapped the small RNAs found in S. pyogenes. She suspected that one of the small RNA molecules that exists in large amounts in this bacterium was linked to the CRISPR sequence (part of the bacterium’s immune system) in the bacterium’s genome. She was able to show that the newly found RNA molecule, named trans-activating RNA (tracrRNA) also has a decisive function and is necessary for the CRISPR system. Charpentier describes herself as having an urge to be free and independent as a scientist and she also often quotes Louis Pasteur, “Chance favors the prepared mind” in interviews. “This is not about a paper published in Nature or published in Science. It’s really about solid work, and I want to say this because nowadays when everyone is evaluated through a potential number of publications and H-index factors, it’s nice, but sometimes you just need one story, one very good story. You need time to do the work in a proper way, in a deep way and I want to mention this because I would not like to see science having lost this sense,” she said to Nobel Media after the Prize announcement. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG 49 PHOTO CLÈMENT MORIN