Photo: The royal swedish academy of sciences

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to two scientists for their discovery on genome editing, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.

The prize went to Emmanuelle Charpentier with the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Germany and Jennifer A. Doudna from the University of California, Berkeley "for the development of a method for genome editing," according to a press release from the academy.

"Very surprised!" said Charpentier in the on-site telephone interview, adding that the discovery, the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, "have the opportunity to develop therapeutics to defeat bacteria."

She added that as a female scientist, she was very happy to get the prize and wanted to send "strong message to young girls who would like to follow the path of science, and to show them that women in science can also be awarded (Nobel) prizes."

This year's prize amount is 10 million Swedish kronor(about 1.12 million U.S. dollars), to be shared equally between the laureates.