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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

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Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#51

Post by jashephe »

madars wrote: post #35
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…

Reading "Heroes of CRISPR" [1] it sounds like that, after Cell rejected the paper, they shortened the claim but it was still very much known to them: > Finally, Siksnys showed that the system could also be reconstituted in a second way—by combining purified His-tagged Cas9, in-vitro-transcribed tracrRNA and crRNA, and RNase III—and that both RNAs were essential for Cas9 to cut DNA. (They would ultimately drop the sec…

While "Heroes of CRISPR" is a fairly detailed history of the whole affair, it's always worth noting that it was written by Eric Lander, the director of an institute with a strong vested financial interest in having the story interpreted in a particular way.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#52

Post by jhbadger »

jashephe wrote: post #51
madars wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading "Heroes of CRISPR" [1] it sounds like that, after Cell rejected the paper, they shortened the claim but it was still very much known to them: > Finally, Siksnys showed that the system could also be reconstituted in a second way—by combining purified His-tagged Cas9, in-vitro-transcribed tracrRNA and crRNA, and RNase III—and that both RNAs were essential for Cas9 to cut DNA. (They would ultimately drop the sec…

While "Heroes of CRISPR" is a fairly detailed history of the whole affair, it's always worth noting that it was written by Eric Lander, the director of an institute with a strong vested financial interest in having the story interpreted in a particular way.

And in particular he of course wanted to make Feng Zhang (who worked for him at the time) to be the principal "hero" of the story.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#53

Post by BurningFrog »

FeistyOtter wrote: post #31
tuxxy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Isn't it because right now research is basically a zero sum game? A government sets a budget for research, so the more and the better papers the other lab publishes, the more funding they get and less funding YOUR lab gets.

> Isn't it because right now research is basically a zero sum game?

Someone really needs to change the game!

A better functioning science would be a huge boost for humanity as a whole.

I don't expect government to change how it operates, but maybe some billionaires can build alternative institutions.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#54

Post by natechols »

tuxxy wrote: post #27
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 t…

1) Because human beings aggressively pursue their self-interest, which extends to getting new credit for scientific discoveries.

2) Because scientific discovery often requires multiple competing approaches (because you don't know which one will work in advance), and top-down control tends to discourage that.

3) Because biomedical discovery is not an inherently directed process most of the time, and top-down control would risk missing out on important discoveries that only happened because we gave individual scientists the freedom to work on whatever they wanted (like bacterial immune systems).

Complaining about this state of affairs is like complaining that housecats aren't vegetarians yet. We have a new genetic manipulation technology that has already revolutionized molecular biology just a few years after it was discovered, and is already being investigated in clinical trials. Anyone who looks at this and says "you're doing it wrong" has a vastly distorted idea of what is actually possible in biomedical science, or any other line of work that requires actual humans to carry it out.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#55

Post by flobosg »

The_rationalist wrote: post #41

What's missing for reseting all / most of the DNA from an organ/a whole body in mammals?? Just reseting the DNA repair section of the DNA of a whole organ would enable massively slowing the ageing/cancer risks of said organ/body! It is the key towards rejuvenation and preventing cancer, heizeimer and most diseases! I can't find a good resource on why this is not currently possible and where can I track scientific inc…

Don't underestimate the complexity of biological systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy#Hurdles

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#56

Post by code4tee »

This is interesting on several fronts. One because it’s a really cool discovery. But two because the Nobel tends to avoid situations where the full origin of the discovery is somewhat in dispute until things settle down. If you know the history here this is very much an active source of debate and the Nobel clearly picked sides here, which is interesting in its own right.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#57

Post by fgblanch »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #45
jray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor Francisco Mojica Francisco Juan Martínez Mojica (Elche, October 5, 1963), usually known as Francisco JM Mojica, is a Spanish scientist, molecular biologist, and microbiologist at the University of Alicante in Spain, known for his discovering research on the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-CRISPR gene editing technique.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Mojica

I don't think it's a case of "poor" Mojica. He discovered some important properties around the palindromic nature of DNA in bacteria, as did others in Japan. While it was important, it is not the same level of contribution as Doudna and Charpentier. I don't think that there is much debate around this.

I disagree, he did not discovered a property, he discovered and described the CRISPR mechanism. He deserves a big part of the credit, without CRISPR there is no CRISPR-cas9. With this award, they are neglecting basic research and just rewarding the applications. Btw I highly recommend to read the Mojica story it is fascinating how he found it and understood how it worked.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#58

Post by natechols »

_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.

It wasn't just that, it was the entire hype machine. Lots of schadenfreude going around today. I probably would have preferred they split the CRISPR award across chemistry and medicine prizes, but life isn't fair.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#59

Post by natechols »

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.

Didn't Church's very similar paper come out at the same time as Zhang's?

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#60

Post by natechols »

BurningFrog wrote: post #53
FeistyOtter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it because right now research is basically a zero sum game? A government sets a budget for research, so the more and the better papers the other lab publishes, the more funding they get and less funding YOUR lab gets.

> Isn't it because right now research is basically a zero sum game? Someone really needs to change the game! A better functioning science would be a huge boost for humanity as a whole. I don't expect government to change how it operates, but maybe some billionaires can build alternative institutions.

People have been trying for well over a century now to form alternative institutions (including governments) based entirely on human cooperation rather than competition. The results have typically been less than impressive so far. Keep in mind that part of the reason our modern concept of "intellectual property" exists is to encourage people to share their discoveries instead of keeping them secret - that's how deeply ingrained in human nature this behavior is.
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