The 2007 Nobel Prize
As everyone probably already knows, the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology went to Mario Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies for developing a way to create transgenic mice by targeting genes. Smithies and Capecchi developed the methodology for creating cells which had specific genes knocked out, while Evans developed a lot of the methodology for using these techniques in stem cells to create live mice that would carry these induced mutations. The knock-out mouse is now one of the most versatile models we have for testing questions about genes and diseases. A good explanation of the process that they developed is explained here.
I know a lot of people just skim the press release, but there are some really interesting nuggets in the “Advanced Information” section of the announcement. For example, Evans first tried to use cancer cells to make mice, but (as you would expect), the cells were just too sick to actually make a good organism. So he actually went through and found the cells the we now use as “Embryonic Stem Cells,” which he used to create mice that were a mosaic of cells of two different mice.
Another thing was that Capecchi and Evans both wrote grants proposing this research (on gene targeting) to the NIH and the UK Medical Research Council (respectively), but both were rejected, because the reviewers thought it would be too hard and unlikely to succeed!
Finally, though this isn’t mentioned on the Nobel website, Capecchi had a really hard life as a child. His mother was arrested and put away in a concentration camp during World War II (for being an anti-Fascist bohemian), and he was left alone for four years as a street urchin. Fortunately, he was later found (very sick and malnutritioned) by his mother (who survived). He moved to the US, went to school, then college, worked under Jim Watson at Harvard, and then went on to have a massively successful career (though, as I mentioned above, not without a few hiccups along that path as well). It’s an amazing life story, and the Nobel Prize surely can’t go to a better person.
