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Comment by ckemere | Hacker News Reader

What about Feng Zhang?

I'm open to pushback. Nobel prizes usually reward basic science over applications thereof. My understanding is that Feng Zhang didn't discover anything fundamental. Sure, he was first with applying CRISPR to eucaryotic cells. Which indeed is an impressive feat: not because it was a huge theoretical leap but because of his labs strong work ethic managing to do so very quickly.

If that were the case then the prize should have been awarded to Yoshimuzi Ishino and Francisco Mojica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Repeated_sequences). This prize was specifically for a new method for gene editing.

Doudna, Charpentier, Zhang won joint prizes before for gene editing: Gairdner, Harvey, and Gabbay awards.

If Zhang was included in the Nobel prize, nobody would ask why he was included. But excluding definitely raises questions on why.

Didn't Church's very similar paper come out at the same time as Zhang's?

I think many people have similar ideas around the same time: Charpentier, Doudna, Zhang, Šikšnys etc. Zhang is the lastest to publish the result, but got the furtherest along in applying to human. I don't think anyone believes Zhang's work is based off others.

So CRISPR/Cas9 Nobel was a given since their breakthrough papers in 2011/2012. Lot of folks were speculating whether it will win in Chemistry or Medicine. Maybe Zhang/Church will win it in Medicine in few years. Also given the revolutionary nature of this technology, there could be be more Nobel prizes in this area in coming years

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