The University of Wisconsin welcomed Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine, to campus Monday to deliver a series of lectures.
Capecchi, a professor of human genetics and biology at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, gave his first lecture, “The Making of a Scientist – An Unlikely Journey,” on Monday. The speech was the first in a series titled the Rennebohm Lectures and focused on Capecchi’s transition between schools as he began his work in genetics.
According to a UW statement, Capecchi is known for his groundbreaking studies on mouse stem cells that have contributed to the technology of gene targeting. His studies have shown that by manipulating mice DNA to create mutations in a certain gene, the evaluation of the gene’s function can be studied in any phase.
Capecchi said genetics are powerful specifically because they can be worked with to discover new truths about the human body.
“Whatever we learn from the mouse is applicable to people,” he said.
Following time at Harvard University as a graduate student, the prize winner attended Harvard medical school, a department he praised despite the tendency toward argument among its faculty.
Capecchi said at meetings, people would spend time insulting each other and always were looking for what was new. He said being asked to find what is new every day led to a focus on short-term experiments in order to have something new to talk about.
He said ultimately the arguments stifled conversations for discoveries that may require a longer time commitment.
“The idea [for gene targeting] was conceived in one day,” Capecchi said. “But we had no idea how to go from A to Z. That took ten years. That would never have happened at Harvard, just nobody has that patience.”
Following his experiences at Harvard, Capecchi turned his sights on Utah.
Capecchi said he was told gene targeting would be impossible when he submitted a grant for gene targeting, which led to his decision to use money from another grant – a move he described as risky.
The Nobel Prize winner described his introduction into gene targeting and said it began through a simple experiment to disprove a paper by Axel and Whittle concerning DNA processes. Capecchi stressed the importance of distinguishing logic from experiments to find the truth.
“Biology isn’t logic, it works,” Capecchi said. “What we have to do is simply figure out how Mother Nature is thinking, not how we think in terms of logic.”
UW Alumna, Ekaterina Mirnova, who attended the event, said she is not a scientist but that she came for her own interest.
Mirnova said she found Capecchi very informative and interesting.
“His journey to Sweden was interesting because generally we don’t know the process of how the Nobel Prize is received,” Mirnova said.
Capecchi will give his second lecture, “Gene Targeting Into the 21st Century: Mouse Models of Human Disease from Cancer to Neuropsychiatric Disorders,” at 3:30 p.m. today in Rennebohm Hall.
