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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

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Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#21

Post by kryptiskt »

dm8 wrote: post #15

Thoroughly deserved. 9 years since publishing their paper in Nature. CRISPR/Cas9 is that revolutionary. Is that the fastest Nobel since breakthrough/discovery? Or was it Graphene Nobel (albeit in Physics) in 2010? EDIT: Looks like fastest Nobel prize since discovery was in 1987 (in Physics) - for high temperature super conductivity. Bednorz and Mueller won their Nobel within 2 years (!!!!!) Ref - https://science.scie…

Yang and Lee got it 1957 for parity violation, work that they did in 1956 and which was experimentally confirmed the same year by Wu (who should have gotten a share, I think).

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#23

Post by Ovah »

ckemere wrote: post #4

What about Feng Zhang?

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.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#24

Post by j7ake »

Ovah wrote: post #23
ckemere wrote: post #4

What about Feng Zhang?

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.

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.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#25

Post by sarthakjshetty »

_Wintermute wrote: post #18
nextaccountic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because they really showed their ugly side when it came to commercialization and the patent court case.

Sorry, I'm out of the loop on this. Can you explain it a bit more? I was aware of the lawsuit between Berkeley and MIT over the patent, but not of the specifics.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#27

Post by tuxxy »

est31 wrote: post #20

The discovery is beyond doubt deserving of the award. It was also awarded only 8 years after the publication. It's a bit sad though that Virginijus Šikšnys didn't get any credit for the discovery, because his paper sent over a month earlier was rejected by Cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginijus_%C5%A0ik%C5%A1nys#P... Edit: The Nobel award paper writes this on his findings: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2…

Why is academia (at least in the physical sciences) so competitive? My partner is a molecular biologist and she can't collaborate with anyone outside of her lab because of the fear that they collaborators will take their research before they get a chance to publish it.

It seems this method of performing groundbreaking research and science is horrifically detrimental to our collective progress. There's no reason for these groups to compete when they could collaborate.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#28

Post by pessimist »

Poor Virginijus Šikšnys, left out because the journal he sent it to rejected without review his paper which was sent before Doudna and Charpentier's.

https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/31/crispr-scientists-kavli-...

"But bad luck with a journal made Šikšnys the forgotten man of CRISPR: Cell rejected his paper in April 2012 without sending it out for peer review. In contrast, when Doudna, Charpentier, and their colleagues showed that Cas9 could be programmed to cut DNA, their paper sped through the review process at Science and was published online in late June 2012. Šikšnys and his co-authors, meanwhile, had scrambled to find a more receptive journal and landed at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which published their paper three months after the Berkeley team’s."

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#29

Post by dm8 »

ckemere wrote: post #4

What about Feng Zhang?

So CRISPR/Cas9 Nobel was a given since their breakthrough papers in 2011/2012. Lot of folks were speculating whether it will win in Chemistry or Medicine. Maybe Zhang/Church will win it in Medicine in few years. Also given the revolutionary nature of this technology, there could be be more Nobel prizes in this area in coming years

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#30

Post by PL1 »

sarthakjshetty wrote: post #25
_Wintermute wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they really showed their ugly side when it came to commercialization and the patent court case.

Sorry, I'm out of the loop on this. Can you explain it a bit more? I was aware of the lawsuit between Berkeley and MIT over the patent, but not of the specifics.

For instance, see http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1825
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