The winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were just announced this morning. This year's prize goes to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for their work on "principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells."This is a bit of a surprise. These were not names that came up regularly in Nobel Prize Gossip. Many people, including me, thought that there would be a specific award for stem cells before anyone got the prize for exploiting stem cells. This doesn't mean that todays winners aren't worthy. I doubt that anyone will question the award to Oliver Smithies, for example. I don't know as much about Capecchi and Evans.
See Press release for a complete description of the work of Capecchi, Evans, and Smithies. Here's the summary ...This year's Nobel Laureates have made a series of ground-breaking discoveries concerning embryonic stem cells and DNA recombination in mammals. Their discoveries led to the creation of an immensely powerful technology referred to as gene targeting in mice. It is now being applied to virtually all areas of biomedicine – from basic research to the development of new therapies.
Gene targeting is often used to inactivate single genes. Such gene "knockout" experiments have elucidated the roles of numerous genes in embryonic development, adult physiology, aging and disease. To date, more than ten thousand mouse genes (approximately half of the genes in the mammalian genome) have been knocked out. Ongoing international efforts will make "knockout mice" for all genes available within the near future.
With gene targeting it is now possible to produce almost any type of DNA modification in the mouse genome, allowing scientists to establish the roles of individual genes in health and disease. Gene targeting has already produced more than five hundred different mouse models of human disorders, including cardiovascular and neuro-degenerative diseases, diabetes and cancer.
[Photo Credit: GETTY, Time magazine]
I knew Capecchi fairly well, in a professional but not personal sense -- he's at Utah, where I did a postdoc.
ReplyDeleteObviously, you don't hang around with enough developmental biologists! If there's one name I heard come up regularly in our Nobel gossip, it was Capecchi's.
You're right, I don't hang out with those people.
ReplyDeleteI hang out with biochemists and Smithies name has come up often—but not this year. Of course we may be a little biased since Smithies was at the University of Toronto from 1953-1960.
I remember once in the mid-1980's when he flew up to Toronto in his plane from Madison to give a seminar on PCR. I thought it was interesting but couldn't imagine what PCR could be used for. It seemed like too much work for no gain.
This award was long overdue. Smithies was not only rersponsible for developing gene targeting but also for developing gel electrophoresis and working on a PCR thermocycler prototype-a man well ahead of his time. Look at it this way, if the biological significance of gene knockouts wasn't identified what would have been the point of RNAi (last year's prize)?
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