Nordic Life Science 1
Edmund Loh, principal investigator at the Departm
ent of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell biology at Karolinska Institutet, has both collaborated with Charpentier and is an old friend of hers. “She is a very meticulous researcher, able to spot the smallest details in all of the work we do and would only publish data and work that has been rigorously tested,” he says. “Emmanuelle is a personal friend too, so I would describe her as a warm and caring person. We are able to talk about everything, but the subject of conversation between us often moves back to science and fundamental research on RNA in bacteria,” he adds. After her discovery of tracrRNA, Emmanuelle wanted to continue to explore and understand the CRISPR/Cas9 system and at a conference in Puerto Rico in 2011 she approached the US biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who had vast knowledge of RNA, and asked her to collaborate in studying the function of Cas9 in S. pyogenes’ simple class 2 system. The collaboration with Doudna was describes as “short and intense” by Charpentier when interviewed by Nobel Media. “It was a common understanding that it was important to join forces, and to be fast. We were very much in line in the way to do very precise research. For this we recognized one another – we are the same type of scientist who, you know, wants to see the details of the data.” The two scientists were able to recreate the bacteria’s genetic scissors in a test tube and revealed the mechanism that has such a broad range of applications in biomedicine. They then figured out how to fuse tracrRNA and CRISPR-RNA into a single molecule, which they named guideRNA and, in an epoch-making experiment, they were able to control this genetic tool to cut the DNA at a location decided by the researchers. Soon after they published their discovery several research groups demonstrated that this tool can be used to modify the genome in cells from both mice and humans, leading to explosive development. “I feel that CRISPR/Cas9 is an excellent example of a scientific breakthrough originating from pure basic science to highlight to the public and media: blue sky research,” said Charpentier to Nobel Media. NLS NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG 51