IN FOCUS NEWS

set of projects. This year, evaluators were also asked to focus on a project’s risk to a greater extent than in previous years. (A spokesperson for the ERC said that the council is still refining the assessment’s methodology.) The 19% figure for scientific break- throughs in the latest assessment is lower than in previous years: 21% and 25% of ERC projects assessed in the 2015 and 2016 VILNIUS UNIV. (LEFT)/HALLBAUER&FIORETTI (LEFT)/HALLBAUER&FIORETTI VILNIUS UNIV. FOTOGRAFIE (MIDDLE)/UC BERKELEY (RIGHT) FOTOGRAFIE exercises, respectively, were classed as such (see ‘Europe’s top research grants’). The reviewers concluded that most projects that made breakthroughs were high risk and high reward, and only 10% of projects were “The ERC has considered low risk. “The ERC really pushed has really pushed the expectation the expectation of taking more of raising the risks.” boundaries of sci- ence and taking more risks,” says Jan Palmowski, secretary- Virginijus Siksnys, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the 2018 Kavli nanoscience prize. general of the Guild of European Research- Intensive Universities, a lobby group in AWARDS Brussels. The assessment shows that risk-friendly funding is crucial for retaining talent in Europe, where research funders are gener- Kavli prize recognizes ally risk-averse, says Martin Vechev, a com- puter scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who received an scooped biochemist ERC grant aimed at early-career researchers in 2015, after spending time at computing Virginijus Siksnys shares award for CRISPR contributions. firm IBM in the United States. The grant encouraged him to stay in Europe, and he BY GIORGIA GUGLIELMI prize to Charpentier at the Max Plank Institute says that the funding helped his team to for Infection Biology in Berlin, Doudna at develop a new subfield of artificial intelli- RISPR has hauled in yet another big the University of California, Berkeley (UC- gence that focuses on machines that auto- science award, and this time the recog- Berkeley) and Siksnys at Vilnius University in matically write computer code. nition includes a scientist whose contri- Lithuania “for the invention of CRISPR-Cas9, The reviewers also said that more than Cbution has sometimes been overlooked. a precise nanotool for editing DNA, causing a 50% of projects had already made an eco- Two biochemists widely credited with revolution in biology, agriculture and medicine”. nomic and societal impact. In a speech co-inventing the gene-editing technol- In 2012, a group led by Charpentier and earlier this year, ERC president Jean-Pierre ogy, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna1, and several months later one led by Bourguignon said that council-funded Doudna, were named on 31 May as the win- Siksnys2, reported programming the CRISPR– research generated 29% of patents approved ners of this year’s Kavli Prize in Nanoscience. So Cas9 system to cut DNA at specific sites. Since through EU funding in 2007–13, despite was Virginijus Siksnys, a Lithuanian biochem- then, award committees, the media and some receiving less than 17% of the money. ist whose independent work on CRISPR has in the scientific community have emphasized thus far garnered much less mainstream atten- the roles of Doudna and Charpentier in devel- FUNDING INCENTIVE tion — and Nobel-prize buzz — than that of oping the transformative gene-editing tool. In The review comes at a crucial time for EU Charpentier, Doudna and some other scientists. 2015, the pair shared the Breakthrough Prize research funding, say observers. This week, Researchers working on the mechanism of in Life Sciences, worth $3 million, for example. the European Commission is expected to hearing and on the formation of stars and plan- But Siksnys’s work on CRISPR has occasion- release a detailed budget plan for the next ets also won Kavli prizes this year, in neurosci- ally been overlooked. The Kavli nanoscience instalment of its main funding programme, ence and astrophysics, respectively. committee recognized that the three research- which will include the ERC’s next pot of The Kavli Foundation — established by the ers conducted “key pioneering work” in the money. The programme, called Horizon late Norwegian philanthropist Fred Kavli in development of CRISPR-based genome edit- Europe, will run from 2021 to 2027 and has Los Angeles, California — and the Norwe- ing, says chairman Arne Brataas, a physicist a proposed budget of nearly €100 billion gian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo at the Norwegian University of Science and (US$117 billion). announced the three biennial prizes, each of Technology in Trondheim. The latest review provides ammunition which comes with US$1 million to be split Siksnys says he was “surprised” when a phone in the fight to raise the ERC’s budget, says between the winners. First awarded in 2008, call from Oslo announced that he would share Palmowski. His organization is advocat- the prizes honour seminal research selected by the Kavli prize with Doudna and Charpentier. ing for a doubling of the annual budget, three panels of experts from six global science “You don’t expect such calls every day,” he says. which in 2017 was €1.8 billion; it started at societies and academies. He adds that he is still disappointed it took so €300 million in 2007. ■ The nanoscience committee awarded the long to publish his results. Cell rejected his

©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts rese7rv eJUNEd. 2018 | VOL 558 | NATURE | 17

NEWS IN FOCUS

paper in April 2012 without sending it out gene-editing tool tend to be ignored, he adds. with observations — especially, those made for peer review; Doudna and Charpentier sub- But Church also says that more attention should with infrared spectroscopy — and labora- mitted their work two months later to Science, be paid to other DNA-editing tools — for exam- tory experiments to understand how com- which fast-tracked it for publication. The Kavli ple, zinc-finger nucleases — some of which are pounds form in space, including the organic prize is “a good example that you can achieve already finding use in medicine and agriculture. molecules that might have been the building your goals and get recognition”, Siksnys adds. blocks for life. She has also used radio tel- “This is a well-deserved prize for three indi- EARS AND STARS escopes to study planet formation around viduals whose discovery made an enormous The neuroscience award went to geneticist other stars. Van Dishoeck is the president-elect impact on modern biology,” says Rotem Sorek, Christine Petit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, of the International Astronomical Union, and a microbial geneticist at the Weizmann Insti- and neuroscientists Robert Fettiplace at the will lead celebrations next year as the union tute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Sorek is not University of Wisconsin–Madison and James celebrates its 100th anniversary. surprised that Siksnys shared the prize. “In the Hudspeth at the Rockefeller University in The laureates will receive their prizes in Oslo field of CRISPR, he is well known as one of the New York City, “for their pioneering work on on 4 September. ■ pioneers of the technology.” the molecular and 1. Jinek, M. et al. Science 337, 816–821 (2012). “It’s nice that the recognition is being spread “This is a neural mechanisms 2. Gasiunas, G., Barrangou, R., Horvath, P. & Siksnys, V. around,” adds Dana Carroll, a biochemist at well-deserved of hearing”. The et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, E2579–E2586 the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. But he prize for three researchers inde- (2012). 3. Cong, L. et al. Science 339, 819–823 (2013). notes that many others have also contributed individuals whose pendently investi- 4. Mali, P. et al. Science 339, 823–826 (2013). to the development of CRISPR. discovery made gated the role of hair 5. Fettiplace, R. Compr. Physiol. 7, 1197–1227 (2017). Synthetic biologist Feng Zhang, at the Broad an enormous cells in the inner Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, impact.” ear. These cells, Massachusetts, has also shared in the accolades. which are covered CORRECTION His team was among the first to apply CRISPR in microscopic hair-like projections, detect The Editorial ‘Smelting point’ (Nature gene-editing to mammalian cells, including sound signals and transmit them to the brain5. 557, 280; 2018) misstated the amount of mouse and human cells3. “There’s the ten- Ewine van Dishoeck, winner of the astro- aluminium produced in 2017. It was more dency to pick the principal investigators,” says physics category, works in astrochemistry at than 63 million tonnes, not 63,000. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medi- Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she And the Editorial ‘False testimony’ (Nature cal School in Boston, Massachusetts, whose has made her mark “elucidating the life cycle of 557, 612; 2018) gave the wrong numbers team also deployed CRISPR in human cells4. interstellar clouds and the formation of stars and for the closed cases. The numbers of closed Young researchers such as the students and planets”, according to the prize citation. cases were 31 and 49, not 25 and 39. postdocs who turned CRISPR into a powerful Her work combines theoretical studies

©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved.