2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced this morning that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mario R. Capecchi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Utah, Martin J. Evans at Cardiff University, and Oliver Smithies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The three were honored for "groundbreaking discoveries concerning embryonic stem cells and DNA recombination in mammals."  Their research has led to the development of powerful gene-targeting techniques that have provided researchers worldwide with the tools to determine the function of individual genes.