Nobel

The Nobel prize for physiology for the year 2007 was announced today.
Mario R. Capecchi, age 70, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Sir Martin J. Evans, age 66, at Cardiff University in Wales and Oliver Smithies, age 82, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, will share the $ 1.54 million prize for the technique of mouse models for genetic disease- creating knockouts and gene targeting.

Wei used to tell me she was the knock out queen at Astra Zeneca - had quite perfected creating knock outs for various enzymes and thats what she used to do all the time.Of date there are 2500 gene knock out models that people like Wei have helped create.Hmm...

It is really such a simple technique in theory.But innovative. Like the hybridoma technique for MAbs. DRK used to say...you don't need to be all high tech and recondite to be innovative. It might be a simple corruption of pathophysiology.Thats how great ideas take fruition.Listening to Mammen Chandy explain RT-PCR was one of the most enlightening experiences for me.He likened it to a story from the Genesis, almost child like in his narration. And in his exuberance in going from step to next step like episodes in a story taught me that great minds keep things beautifully simple.They don't know all the things all the time. But they know what to do all the time.

We complicate things by oversexing them.We think that if it is difficult to understand, it must be something great. Like Despo's quaint logic- the special theory of relativity is great because so few people understand it in concept.Thats exclusivist.I wonder if Despo ever did. If people do not understand it, what utility is it going to have except being fodder for intellectual masturbation at shibboleth conventions for those who do?

Einstein had this to say: "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."