Inside Duke Medicine
M.D.-Ph.D. Keynote: Sixty years as a scientist
posted March 27th, 2009The 2009 M.D.-Ph.D. Symposium is presenting the keynote address entitled “On Being A Scientist For Sixty Years” by Oliver Smithies, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Smithies will give the address during the symposium from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on April 2 at the Levine Science Research Center Love Auditorium (LSRC B101.)
Smithies shared the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Mario Capecchi and Sir Martin J. Evans for work using gene targeting via homologous recombination to generate mice in which specific genes are rendered useless.
Over the past 20 years, studies of such knockout mice have revolutionized our understanding of gene function and human disease.
Smithies also is the inventor of gel electrophoresis, a now widely used technique he developed in 1955 to separate mixtures of proteins, DNA or RNA based on differences in their masses or electrical charges.