(2007) Mario Capecchi
Mario Renato Capecchi (Verona, Italy, 6 October 1937) is an Italian-born American molecular geneticist and a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off (knocked out). He infected embryonic stem cells with a viral vector that was designed to incorporate itself into the target gene by homologous recombination. Homologous recombination is a process that cells normally use to repair their DNA, which is exploited by viruses to infect cells. He shared the prize with Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies.
