Deep-sea hydrothermal vents: Undersea clues to the origin of life

The word “serendipity” is often used to describe an important discovery born out of random chance rather than deliberate action. Such “happy accidents” pepper the annals of scientific history, from Archimedes’ original “Eureka!” moment to Alexander Fleming’s discovery of antibiotics, to the invention of everyday items like Velcro, Teflon™, and…

Rewriting the Secret of Life: The Story of CRISPR

Earlier today, the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”. CRISPR-Cas9, the technique that brought the duo the coveted prize, has raised excitement and controversy in almost equal measures…

The Story Behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine

Part 1: Going back to Nature The year is 1967. Thirty-two year old Satoshi Ōmura, in his lab at the prestigious Kitasato University in Japan, is giving serious thought to the direction his research career is going to take. In the two years he has spent at the University, he…