Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier (French pronunciation: [emanɥɛl maʁi ʃaʁpɑ̃tje]; born 11 December 1968) is a French scientist who studies microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. She worked as a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin starting in 2015. In 2018, she created a new research institute called the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. In 2020, Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna from the University of California, Berkeley, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a method called CRISPR, which allows scientists to edit DNA. This was the first time a science Nobel Prize was given to two women.
Early life and education
Charpentier’s father’s father, named Sinanian, was from Armenia. He fled to France during the Armenian Genocide and married his wife in Marseille. Charpentier was born in 1968 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. She studied biochemistry, microbiology, and genetics at Pierre and Marie Curie University, which later became part of Sorbonne University’s Faculty of Science in Paris. From 1992 to 1995, she was a graduate student at the Institut Pasteur and earned a research doctorate. Her PhD research focused on how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.
Career and research
From 1993 to 1995, Charpentier worked as a teaching assistant at Pierre and Marie Curie University. She then became a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Pasteur from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, she moved to the United States and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rockefeller University in New York until 1997. During this time, she studied in the lab of Elaine Tuomanen, a scientist who researched how the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae uses genetic material to change its DNA. Charpentier also helped show how this bacteria becomes resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin.
From 1997 to 1999, Charpentier was an assistant research scientist at New York University Medical Center. She worked in the lab of Pamela Cowin, a scientist who studied how genes control skin cells in mammals. Charpentier published a paper about how genes affect hair growth in mice. From 1999 to 2002, she worked as a research associate at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in New York.
After five years in the United States, Charpentier returned to Europe in 2002. She became a lab leader and guest professor at the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics at the University of Vienna until 2004. In 2004, she published a study about an RNA molecule that helps control the production of harmful substances in the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes. From 2004 to 2006, she was a lab leader and assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology. In 2006, she became a privatdozentin (a title for advanced researchers) in Microbiology and earned her habilitation at the Centre of Molecular Biology. From 2006 to 2009, she was a lab leader and associate professor at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories.
In 2008, Charpentier moved to Sweden and became a lab leader and associate professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) at Umeå University. She led a research group from 2008 to 2013 and was a visiting professor from 2014 to 2017. From 2013 to 2015, she worked as a department head and W3 Professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and the Hannover Medical School. In 2014, she received the title of Alexander von Humboldt Professor.
In 2015, Charpentier joined the German Max Planck Society as a scientific member and director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. Since 2016, she has been an Honorary Professor at Humboldt University in Berlin. She remained a visiting professor at Umeå University until 2017, when a donation from the Kempe Foundations and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation allowed her to create more research positions for young scientists at MIMS. In 2018, she became the founding and acting director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens.
CRISPR/Cas9
Charpentier is best known for her Nobel Prize-winning research on understanding how a bacterial immune system, called CRISPR/Cas9, works and turning it into a tool for editing genes. She discovered a new process that helps a special type of RNA, called tracrRNA, become functional. This RNA is important for the CRISPR/Cas9 system to work properly.
In 2011, Charpentier met Jennifer Doudna at a scientific meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They began working together. Using Doudna’s laboratory, Charpentier’s team showed that Cas9 could be used to cut DNA at specific places. The method they created combined Cas9 with man-made "guide RNA" molecules. These guide RNA molecules are made by joining two types of RNA: crRNA and tracrRNA. This discovery proved that CRISPR/Cas9 could be used to edit genes easily. Scientists around the world have used this method to change DNA in plants, animals, and cells grown in labs. Since its discovery, CRISPR has changed the field of genetics by letting scientists study how genes affect health and disease and create new treatments that may be safer and more effective than earlier gene therapies.
In 2013, Charpentier helped start two companies called CRISPR Therapeutics and ERS Genomics with Shaun Foy and Rodger Novak.
Awards
In 2015, Time magazine named Charpentier one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, along with Jennifer Doudna.
Charpentier has received the following awards:
– Nobel Prize in Chemistry
– Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
– Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine
– Gruber Foundation International Prize in Genetics
– Leibniz Prize
– Tang Prize
– Japan Prize
– Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
– BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (with Jennifer Doudna and Francisco Mojica).
Affiliations and honors:
– 2016: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
– 2016: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
– 2016: New York University (NYU)
– 2017: Faculty of Medicine, Umeå University, Sweden
– 2017: University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
– 2017: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
– 2018: Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
– 2018: University of Cambridge
– 2018: University of Manchester
– 2019: McGill University, Canada
– 2024: University of Saskatchewan, Canada
– 2024: University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy
Honorary memberships:
– 2014: European Molecular Biology Organisation
– 2015: National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
– 2016: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
– 2016: Austrian Academy of Sciences
– 2016: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
– 2017: U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Associate
– 2017: National Academy of Technologies of France
– 2017: French Académie des sciences
– 2018: European Academy of Sciences and Arts
– 2021: Pontifical Academy of Sciences
– 2024: Foreign Member of the Royal Society
In popular culture
In 2019, Charpentier was a character in the play STEM FEMMES by a theater group in Philadelphia called Applied Mechanics.
In 2021, Walter Isaacson described the story of Jennifer Doudna and her work with Charpentier, which led to the discovery of CRISPR/CAS-9, in the book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.