Nobel Prize for chemistry awarded for ‘genome scissors’

Emmanuelle Charpentier, left, and Jennifer Doudna (/Susan Walsh/AP)

French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer A Doudna have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a method of genome editing likened to “molecular scissors” that offer the promise of one day curing genetic diseases.

The recipients were announced on Wednesday in Stockholm by Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.