Re:The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020
by Ovah on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @06:43AM
(#24706935)
I'm open to pushback. Nobel prizes usually reward basic science over applications thereof. My understanding is that Feng Zhang didn't discover anything fundamental. Sure, he was first with applying CRISPR to eucaryotic cells. Which indeed is an impressive feat: not because it was a huge theoretical leap but because of his labs strong work ethic managing to do so very quickly.
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If that were the case then the prize should have been awarded to Yoshimuzi Ishino and Francisco Mojica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Repeated_sequences). This prize was specifically for a new method for gene editing.
Doudna, Charpentier, Zhang won joint prizes before for gene editing: Gairdner, Harvey, and Gabbay awards.
If Zhang was included in the Nobel prize, nobody would ask why he was included. But excluding definitely raises questions on why.
I think many people have similar ideas around the same time: Charpentier, Doudna, Zhang, Šikšnys etc. Zhang is the lastest to publish the result, but got the furtherest along in applying to human. I don't think anyone believes Zhang's work is based off others.