Prof Charles Adetunji on 2024 Career-long List of the World’s Top 2% Scientists

Nigerian erudite academic, Prof Charles Adetunji has been recognized in the prestigious 2024 Career-long List of the World’s Top 2% Scientists, as well as the single-year Most Impactful List of Distinguished Professors globally.

In an interview with Spiked Online Media, the respected scientist said the achievement reflects the unwavering support and dedication of many individuals and institutions, especially the Genome Editing programme that was being spearheaded by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD).

Genome editing is one of the latest tools that has been developed by scientists to effect changes in organisms of agricultural, medical, and economic importance. The advent of genome editing has increased the available tools and the effectiveness of developing new productive and better-adapted organisms of economic importance.

Genome Editing (GEd) involves the deliberate introduction of mutations to the genome of an organism through insertion, replacement, or deletion of DNA sequence.  GEd usually aims to improve desirable traits of a crop or livestock. It enables modifications at specific sites of DNA through a DNA repair system (Khalil, 2020). Meganucleases (MN), Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs), Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs), and the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-associated proteins methods of GEd are becoming popular because they are precise and do not introduce foreign DNA into the cell (Mengstie and Zawdie, 2020).

Speaking about the award to the members of the AUDA-NEPAD genome editing programme, Prof Adetunji had the following to say.

“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to our distinguished and erudite Genome editing family. Your commitment to fostering an environment of excellence has been instrumental in this accomplishment.

“This recognition is dedicated to you all for your constant support always. Together, let us continue to strive for excellence and make a significant impact in our fields.”

Below are the complete lists of the awardees: