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On 5 October, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius had a telephone conversation with the Lithuanian biochemist, Vilnius University Professor Virginijus Šikšnys. Linkevičius congratulated the scientist on his extraordinary academic achievements and thanked him for promoting the country’s name in the world.

“We are proud of you, your team’s discovery and that the name of Lithuania sounded among the possible winners of the Nobel Prize. Your discovery inspires us all. You have proved once again that Lithuania creates world-class science innovations,” said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister.

Linkevičius congratulated Šikšnys on receiving the 2016 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for his remarkable contributions to the understanding of the CRISPR bacterial defence system and the revolutionary discovery that it can be adapted for genome editing. Šikšnys is the first Lithuanian scientist and one of the few European scientists who have been awarded this prize. Five scientists share the award this year. The prize, in association with Harvard Medical School, recognizes and honours scientists, whose scientific achievements have led to the prevention, cure or treatment of human diseases or disorders.

This year’s laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry were announced on 5 October. Šikšnys was one of the candidates for the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 was awarded jointly to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”.