[Fission]

There was a really interesting debate here on who should get credit for the patent (Charpentier & Doudna vs. Feng Zhang and to a lesser extent George Church, i.e. discovery + characterization vs. making things practical). I find it interesting, but not surprising, to see that only the former are getting the Nobel Prize.

[adventured]

It's a reasonably segmented group. Charpentier and Doudna deserve the breakthrough credit they're getting. Individually Feng Zhang did more to push CRISPR forward than anyone else has thus far. And George Church has had his hands all over the space for a very long time, while not fitting into either of the prior two groups.

It's so big it more than requires all of them, contributing in the ways they have (along with countless others, less heralded, at places like Berkeley or Broad).

[divbzero]

George Church praised the Nobel committee’s choice and noted that there are plenty of ideas and companies to go around [1]. I wouldn’t be surprised if CRISPR in medical applications leads to future Nobel prizes, and there will be many winners on the commercial side (e.g. Editas cofounded by Church, Doudna, Zhang and others [2]).

[1]: https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/07/a-terrific-choice-george...

[2]: https://www.genengnews.com/topics/genome-editing/zhang-churc...