The impact that the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 has had on life science research is almost immeasurable, as the number of research projects utilizing the cutting-edge molecular technique has exploded since its initial description as a molecular method in a Science paper in 2012. While the fate of patent rights for CRISPR/Cas9 are currently in the hands of the federal courts, there is no question of the contribution that Emmanuelle Charpentier, Ph.D., director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, and Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, have made to the development of the revolutionary DNA-editing tool.