Knockout mouse (homologous recombination in stem cells)
Ratón knockout (recombinación homóloga en células madre)
- Date
- 1987-1989 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
- Credited to
- Mario Capecchi, Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Capecchi and Smithies managed to replace a specific gene in the genome of mouse embryonic stem cells with an inactivated version through homologous recombination; Evans had supplied the cells. Mice with a gene switched off became the main tool for learning gene function.
Capecchi (Utah, Cell 1987) and Smithies (North Carolina, Nature 1987–1989) separately arrived at homologous recombination in mammalian cells; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2007.
What it led to
- thousands of human-disease models with inactivated genes
- international knockout mouse projects (IKMC, KOMP)
- targeted gene modification before CRISPR