KNOCKING out a mouse is one way to win a Nobel prize.
This year鈥檚 Nobel prize for medicine is shared by Martin Evans of Cardiff University, UK, Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their combined work that made it possible to 鈥渒nock out鈥� specific genes in mice, revealing the gene鈥檚 function and its impact on disease.
Evans did the early work, by discovering 鈥減luripotent鈥� embryonic stem cells in 1981, then working out how to create live mice from them. In 1986, Capecchi and Smithies used a process called homologous recombination to genetically engineer these stem cells so they produced a live mouse that has either an inactive version of a gene or a new gene entirely.
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鈥淭he development of gene targeting technology in the mouse has had a profound influence on medical research,鈥� says Stephen O鈥橰ahilly of the University of Cambridge. For example, it has allowed scientists to engineer around 10,000 specific types of knockout mice to date, each providing a direct way to study the influence of genes on disease.
