STOCKHOLM — The 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to two women who developed CRISPR/Cas9, a tool that allows scientists to cut parts of the genome like a pair of molecular scissors.

Emmanuelle Charpentier, 51, and Jennifer A. Doudna, 56, were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday, Oct. 7, becoming only the sixth and seventh women ever to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry and the first all-female team to win the award, according to Science Magazine.

Charpentier is the Founding, Scientific and Managing Director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin. Doudna is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

This animation explains how the CRISPR/Cas9 method for gene editing works.