Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier are Biochemists who helped develop CRISPR and have also been involved in many other contributions to the biochemistry and genetics fields.

Doudna was born in Washington, D.C. in 1964. She quickly rose to the top of her academics eventually ending up at Harvard Medical School.

Charpentier was born in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France in 1968. She attended the Pasteur Institute, a French non-profit foundation that is dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines.

From there, they have continued to prove themselves as one of the brightest minds in the field of gene editing.

CRISPR sequences were first discovered in E. coli bacteria in 1987 by Japanese researchers; however, their function remained a mystery until 2012, when Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier repurposed the technology to edit the genome more precisely than ever before. CRISPR-Cas9 is significant because it is able to edit DNA. If the tool is unlocked and developed to its full potential, scientists will be able to eliminate diseases and birth defects in the embryo before birth. CRISPR also has the potential to eliminate AIDS/HIV. Its development is truly amazing and has great potential to rid humans of issues they have dealt with for centuries.

Doudna and Charpentier received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for their work on CRISPR. Dounda was named one of  Time’s top 100 most influential people in 2015 for her work on CRISPR. Together, the both have them have earned a surplus of awards for their work.

All in all, their collective work on CRISPR has potential to change the world. They changed what CRISPR was, turning it from a biomedical mystery to a biomedical tool. Doudna and Charptentier, two successful and highly educated women, are pioneers of the genome editing field, and their names will go into the history books for forever.