Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize but not the intellectual property dispute and are now ready to give up two patents granted in Europe. The scoop once again comes from Antonio Regalado, who gained fame a few years ago for breaking the CRISPR babies scandal.
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MicroRNAs won Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Thomas Cech (Nobel Laureate for the discovery of catalytic RNA) has found a fun way to explain how they work. His book, which I reviewed a few weeks ago, is a mine of insights and information. Here is a small excerpt.
Continue readingSammy Basso, 28, the longest-living person with progeria and a brilliant mind, has passed away. He was a biologist passionate about genome editing, and we’d like to remember him through this dialogue with David Liu.
Testing of Chardonnay edited to resist downy mildew starts today near Verona, while the prosecco variety awaits its turn in the greenhouse
Forget Odin, the controversial kit that was being sold online by controversial “biohacker” Josiah Zayner (getting people to play around with developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria is certainly not a good idea). At Stanford University they have developed a CRISPRkit for cell-free in vitro experiments that is easy and safe because the target is a harmless pigment. And the great thing is that it costs less than an American coffee (two dollars).
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RNA interference, mRNA vaccines, RNA-guided editing. These are just some of the fields of biomedical research that have exploded in recent years and brought RNA out of the projected shadow of the most famous nucleic acid: DNA. Credit for the ongoing scientific and technological revolution goes to researchers such as Thomas Cech, who have been able to look beyond the double helix and, in many cases, have earned Nobel prizes (the latest being Katalin Karikό for the anti-Covid vaccine). But we also owe a nice gratitude to the strange critters who first exhibited some unexpected phenomena that later became of universal interest.
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Four intense days of talks and discussions on the present and future of agricultural genetics. We will be there at the round table “Social impact of plant biotechnologies: challenges and opportunities” (12 September afternoon). See the full program here.
Maxine Singer was a pioneer in DNA research, inspirer of the Asilomar Conference for the self-regulation of genetic engineering, a key player in an exciting and tumultuous phase of biology, a voice for women in science. This is how the New York Times remembers her.
CRISPeR FRENZY 