Together with an American colleague, French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier has developed a kind of "enzyme scissors" for altering DNA easily, quickly and precisely. The discovery heralded in a new era in biology.

CRISPR-Cas9, as the method is known, could be instrumental in curing genetic diseases. In the past two years alone, Charpentier has received several major scientific awards. Is she a contender for this year's Nobel Prize? Tomorrow Today met up with Charpentier, who's now a director at Berlin's Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology.