The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2007
Press Release 8 October 2007 from The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2007/press.html
Summary:
This year’s Nobel Prize in Fysiology or Medicine is going to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies. Direct quote from the press release: “principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells". The scientists are from the USA and the UK and did research on how to knock out specific genes and creating knockout-mice. Knocking out genes has proven to be of immense value to study how genes work. The original research was done in the eighties and has resulted in hundreds of animal-models for human diseases like cancer and diabetes.
Opinion:
A well deserved Nobel Prize though its always difficult to choose with so much important research going on in the field! The techniques mentioned in the press release are very commonly practised by now. The knockout mice themselves have proven to be a very useful tool, you can’t open a science magazine without finding some research involving knockout mice. Personally I think the cure for cancer will corm from molecular biological research, carcinogenis is an extremely complex process involving many genes and cascade reactions. Knockout mice help scientists unravel this complex process and possibly find a way to control it.
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1 comment:
In scientific research it's really hard to choose a discovering who's the worth of a Nobel price. Making knockout- mices aren't very new, but the principle behind this is very important and finding genes that were associated for example to cancer is with nowadays technologie easy but knockingout these genes is very difficult and there are many research studies to be need for doing that. Hopefully in the future we will be have enough knowledge for curing this painfull disease.
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