Francisco Martínez Mojica
Basic Research 2016Elche, 1963. PhD in Biology from the University of Alicante and the Université Paris-Sud, France; Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and founder of the Molecular Microbiology research group, which focuses on the study of CRISPR systems (CRISPR, bacterial immunity, gene expression, DNA topology).
He has been involved in research into Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) since he first discovered these sequences whilst working on his doctoral thesis.
Dr Mojica’s pioneering work on CRISPR over more than two decades establishes him as the driving force behind CRISPR research worldwide, having spent most of that time as the sole, or one of the very few, researchers apparently interested in this phenomenon. In particular, his discovery of the existence of an acquired immune system in bacteria is one of the greatest advances in microbiology – and almost certainly in biology – in recent history. This achievement is comparable only to the discovery of restriction enzymes or the development of the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) technique.
The existence in prokaryotes (cells without a defined cell nucleus) of this regulatory and defence mechanism has significant scientific, technological and socio-economic implications.
Exceptional tools (generically known as CRISPR-Cas technology) have recently been developed, thanks to the knowledge generated from Basic Research into the CRISPR interference mechanism. CRISPR-Cas is considered the most effective, specific and affordable genome-editing tool available, applicable to any organism, from bacteria to humans, including living beings previously considered untreatable in this regard.
He is a principal investigator on several programmes funded by the European Commission, the Generalitat Valenciana and the Spanish Government. He holds a patent for a ‘Method for the detection of spacer insertion in CRISPR structures’. Among his other scientific activities, he serves as a project reviewer for the Spanish National Agency for Evaluation and Prospective Studies, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom) and the National Research Agency (France).
The jury for the Rei Jaume I Prizes for Basic Research, meeting in Valencia, has unanimously decided to award the 2016 prize to Francisco Juan Martínez Mójica, for the discovery of CRISPR, the basis of innate immunity in bacteria, which has led to the development of genome editing using CRISPR-Cas9.
