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Emmanuelle Charpentier: Dedicated to Science
French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier has performed research all over the world, even in the very north of Sweden – always equipped with a precise, dedicated and prepared focus on her scientific mission.
Emmanuelle Charpentiers’s first reaction to winning the Nobel Prize, despite the reoccurring speculations, was that she could not believe it. ”It is still very emotional,” she said to Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Media, the same day she received the famous telephone call. “I also think of my colleagues, all the former members of my team, Elitza Deltcheva and Krzysztof Chylinski, who really also made this happen,” she added.
That her discovery of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors would be ground-breaking she did really believe in – already from the start.
“I understood very quickly that if CRISPR/Cas was to be exploited as a tool for genome silencing and engineering, then the CRISPR/Cas9 system would provide the best opportunities for application – because it is the simplest of the CRISPR/Cas systems existing in bacteria. I had even predicted early on that the system could be harnessed to treat human genetic disorders, which the Swiss-based company CRISPR Therapeutics that I cofounded, together with Rodger Novak and Shaun Foy, now focuses on,” Charpentier said in an interview with EMBO in 2015.
A natural process
The 2020 Nobel Prize was unique in many ways, not least due to the ongoing pandemic. The 2020 Laureates obviously missed out on the traditional festivities in Stockholm, but the year was also unique due to the fact that it was the first time two women scientists shared a Nobel Prize. Charpentier said in the interview with Nobel Media that she is foremost a scientist, but she also said that it is important to send a message to girls and young women choosing to focus on science.
“It is a reflection of what is occurring nowadays. You don’t specifically look at the gender, and it’s a good example to show that nowadays it is what happens, you have a lot of collaborations happening among, let’s say, male leaders only or female leaders only, or a mix, and it’s fine, it’s the way it’s supposed to be, it should be a natural process.”
On the move
Emmanuelle, born 1968, grew up in Juvisy-sur-Orge in the north of France. Her mother worked in psychiatry and her father was responsible for planning green spaces in the city. For a period of time she wanted to become a detective, Emmanuelle stated in an interview with Swedish Television (2020), and she reflects that is actually not so far from what she is doing today; looking for clues to solve a problem.
Charpentier started studying biology and genetics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. She was drawn to the university not only because of the subjects she studied, but also because of the somewhat monastic atmosphere it possessed, an isolated and quiet environment where she could always develop and be able to pass her knowledge on, she said to Swedish Television. Emmanuelle continued to perform her doctoral studies at the Institute Pasteur in Paris and she became a microbiologist. She was a post-doc at Institut Pasteur and then at The Rockefeller University, New York. Including Paris, Emmanuelle has lived in five different countries, seven different cities, and worked at ten different institutes. In an interview with Max Planck Institute she said that leaving different places also means constantly leaving her comfort zone, scrutinizing and tweaking her own work.
Peace and quiet
Emmanuelle Charpentier has focused most of her scientific career on understanding the fundamental mechanisms of diseases, with a particular focus on infections caused by Gram-positive bacterial pathogens. In 2002, when she got the opportunity to start her own research group at the University of Vienna, she studied streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), one of our most harmful bacteria, and she began investigating how its genes are regulated. In 2009 she had the opportunity to go to Umeå, in the north of Sweden, and become Group Leader at the Laboratory of Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), at Umeå University. She remained there until 2013 and between 2014 and 2017 she was Visiting Professor MIMS, Umeå University.
In an interview with Swedish Television (2020) she said that she liked the fact that it was way up north and quite dark, as she would be able to fully focus on her science and could spend hour after hour doing that and not getting bored.
“I thought that it was interesting that there was a desire among the Nordic countries to really drive research in infection biology at Umeå University,” Charpentier said in an interview with Swedish Television, 2020. In the same interview she sad that Umeå University stands out as a model for encouraging young leaders and giving them the opportunity and support to pursue research on knowledge gap projects for many years, like her own choice of research area.
A very meticulous researcher
In Umeå Charpentier examined small, gene-regulating RNA molecules. Working with researchers in Berlin, she mapped the small RNAs found in S. pyogenes. She suspected that one of the small RNA molecules that exists in large amounts in this bacterium was linked to the CRISPR sequence (part of the bacterium’s immune system) in the bacterium’s genome. She was able to show that the newly found RNA molecule, named trans-activating RNA (tracrRNA) also has a decisive function and is necessary for the CRISPR system.
Charpentier describes herself as having an urge to be free and independent as a scientist and she also often quotes Louis Pasteur, “Chance favors the prepared mind” in interviews.
“This is not about a paper published in Nature or published in Science. It’s really about solid work, and I want to say this because nowadays when everyone is evaluated through a potential number of publications and H-index factors, it’s nice, but sometimes you just need one story, one very good story. You need time to do the work in a proper way, in a deep way and I want to mention this because I would not like to see science having lost this sense,” she said to Nobel Media after the Prize announcement.
Edmund Loh, principal investigator at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell biology at Karolinska Institutet, has both collaborated with Charpentier and is an old friend of hers.
“She is a very meticulous researcher, able to spot the smallest details in all of the work we do and would only publish data and work that has been rigorously tested,” he said. “Emmanuelle is a personal friend too, so I would describe her as a warm and caring person. We are able to talk about everything, but the subject of conversation between us often moves back to science and fundamental research on RNA in bacteria.”
Blue sky research
After her discovery of tracrRNA, Emmanuelle wanted to continue to explore and understand the CRISPR/Cas9 system and at a conference in Puerto Rico in 2011 she approached the US biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who had vast knowledge of RNA, and asked her to collaborate in studying the function of Cas9 in S. pyogenes’ simple class 2 system. The collaboration with Doudna was describes as “short and intense” by Charpentier when interviewed by Nobel Media. “It was a common understanding that it was important to join forces, and to be fast. We were very much in line in the way to do very precise research. For this we recognized one another – we are the same type of scientist who, you know, wants to see the details of the data.”
The two scientists were able to recreate the bacteria’s genetic scissors in a test tube and revealed the mechanism that has such a broad range of applications in biomedicine. They then figured out how to fuse tracrRNA and CRISPR-RNA into a single molecule, which they named guideRNA and, in an epoch-making experiment, they were able to control this genetic tool to cut the DNA at a location decided by the researchers. Soon after they published their discovery several research groups demonstrated that this tool can be used to modify the genome in cells from both mice and humans, leading to explosive development.
“I feel that CRISPR/Cas9 is an excellent example of a scientific breakthrough originating from pure basic science to highlight to the public and media: blue sky research,” said Charpentier to Nobel Media.
Updated: October 6, 2024, 08:11 pm
Published: March 28, 2021
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