Mario Ramberg Capecchi (born 6 October 1937) is an Italian-born molecular
geneticist and a co-awardee of the 2007
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
for discovering a method to create mice in which a specific gene is turned off, known as
knockout mice
A knockout mouse, or knock-out mouse, is a genetically modified mouse (''Mus musculus'') in which researchers have inactivated, or " knocked out", an existing gene by replacing it or disrupting it with an artificial piece of DNA. They are importan ...
.
He shared the prize with
Martin Evans and
Oliver Smithies.
He is currently Distinguished Professor of
Human Genetics and
Biology
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...
at the
University of Utah School of Medicine.
Life
Mario Capecchi was born in
Verona
Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...
, Italy, as the only child of Luciano Capecchi and Lucy Ramberg, an Italian-born
daughter of American-born
Impressionist painter Lucy Dodd Ramberg and German archaeologist Walter Ramberg. His parents weren't married, and due to the chaos in Europe caused by
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the story of his early life is remarkable, but the details are unclear. In 1941 he and his mother were living near
Bolzano
Bolzano ( ; ; or ) is the capital city of South Tyrol (officially the province of Bolzano), Northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third largest in historical Tyrol. The ...
, about 160 miles north of his father in
Reggio Emilia
Reggio nell'Emilia (; ), usually referred to as Reggio Emilia, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, and known until Unification of Italy, 1861 as Reggio di Lombardia, is a city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has about 172,51 ...
when his mother was arrested and deported for pamphleteering and belonging to an anti-
Fascist
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
group.
Prior to her arrest
she had made contingency plans by selling her belongings and giving the proceeds to a nearby peasant family to care for her child. However, it was not long before Mario ended up on the streets of Bolzano.
In July 1942, a few months before his fifth birthday, Italian records suggest he was reunited with his father in Reggio Emilia, which Mario did confirm but stated that he stayed with his father for only for a few brief periods and that he mostly lived on the streets until he was placed in an orphanage towards the end of the war.
Mario almost died of malnutrition. His mother survived the war in Germany (part of the reason the details of his early life are unclear is that she would never talk about her experiences), and when it ended she began a year-long search for him. She finally found him on his ninth birthday in a hospital bed in Reggio Emilia ill with a fever and subsisting on a daily bowl of
chicory coffee and bread crust. She took him to Rome, where he had his first bath since he had left her care and where, with money sent by his uncle,
Edward Ramberg, an American physicist at
RCA, they made arrangements to depart to the United States. He and his mother moved to
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
to live at an "intentionally cooperative community" called
Bryn Gweled, which had been co-founded by his uncle. (Capecchi's other maternal uncle, Walter Ramberg, was also a prominent American physicist). He graduated from
George School, a Quaker boarding school in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Bucks County is a County (United States), county in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 646,538, making it the List of counties in Pennsylvania, four ...
, in 1956.
Capecchi received his
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
in
chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
and
physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
in 1961 from
Antioch College
Antioch College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection and began operating in 1852 as a non-secta ...
in
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
. Capecchi came to
MIT as a graduate student intending to study physics and mathematics, but during the course of his studies, he became interested in molecular biology. His change of interest was driven by the preference of working with few scientists and conducting experiments that did not require the use of big machines. He subsequently transferred to Harvard to join the lab of
James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Capecchi received his
PhD in
biophysics
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...
in 1967
from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, with his doctoral thesis completed under the tutelage of Watson.
Capecchi was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 1967 to 1969. In 1969 he became an assistant professor in the Department of
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...
at
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...
. He was promoted to associate professor in 1971. In 1973 he joined the faculty at the University of Utah. Since 1988 Capecchi has also been an investigator of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
. He has given a talk for
Duke University
Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
's Program in Genetics and Genomics as part of their Distinguished Lecturer Series. He was the speaker for the 2010 Racker Lectures in Biology & Medicine and Cornell Distinguished Lecture in Cell and Molecular Biology at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. He is a member of the
Italy-USA Foundation.
After the Nobel committee publicly announced that Capecchi was awarded the Nobel prize, an Austrian woman named Marlene Bonelli claimed that Capecchi was her long-lost half-brother.
In May 2008, Capecchi met with Bonelli, then 69, in northern Italy, and confirmed that she was his sister.
Knockout mice
Capecchi was awarded the Nobel prize for creating a
knockout mouse. This is a mouse, created by genetic engineering and in vitro fertilization, in which a particular gene has been turned off. For this work, Capecchi was awarded the 2007 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, along with
Martin Evans and
Oliver Smithies, who also contributed.
Capecchi has also pursued a systematic analysis of the mouse
Hox gene
Hox genes, a subset of homeobox, homeobox genes, are a gene cluster, group of related genes that Evolutionary developmental biology, specify regions of the body plan of an embryo along the craniocaudal axis, head-tail axis of animals. Hox protein ...
family. This gene family plays a key role in the control of
embryonic development
In developmental biology, animal embryonic development, also known as animal embryogenesis, is the developmental stage of an animal embryo. Embryonic development starts with the fertilization of an egg cell (ovum) by a sperm, sperm cell (spermat ...
in all
multicellular animals. They determine the placement of cellular development in the proper order along the axis of the body from head to toe.
Honours
*1969 –
Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry
*1992 –
Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research
*1993 –
Gairdner Foundation International Award for Achievements in Medical Sciences
*1993 –
Gairdner Foundation International Award
*1994 –
General Motors
General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...
Cancer Research Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize
*1996 –
Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences
*1996 – German Molecular Bioanalytics Prize
*1997 –
Franklin Medal for Advancing Our Knowledge of the Physical Sciences
*1998 –
Feodor Lynen Lectureship
*1998 –
Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence
*1998 – Baxter Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences
*1999 – Helen Lowe Bamberger Colby and John E. Bamberger Presidential Endowed Chair in the University of Utah Health Sciences Center
*2000 – Lectureship in the Life Sciences for the Collège de France
*2000 –
Horace Mann Distinguished Alumni Award, Antioch College
*2000 – Italian Premio Phoenix-Anni Verdi for Genetics Research Award
*2001 –
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, co-winner with
Martin Evans and
Oliver Smithies
*2001 – Spanish Jiménez-Diáz Prize
*2001 – Pioneers of Progress Award
*2001 –
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral science, behavior ...
*2002 – John Scott Medal Award
*2002 –
Massry Prize from the
Keck School of Medicine,
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
*2003 –
Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research
*2002–2003 –
Wolf Prize in Medicine
*2005 –
March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology
*2007 – Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award for Biotechnology and Medicine
*2007 –
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
, co-winner with
Martin Evans and
Oliver Smithies
*2008 – American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award
*2011 – Cátedra Santiago Grisolía Prize, Valencia Spain
*2011 – Mike Hogg Award, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
*2012 –
UCSF medal
*2012 – Honorary Doctorate Degree, University of Bologna Medical School, Italy
*2013 – Honorary Doctorate Degree, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
*2013 – Honorary Doctorate Degree, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
*2013 – Trinity College Historical Society Gold Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Public Discourse, Dublin Ireland
*2014 – Keynote Speaker at the Congress of Future Medical Leaders
*2015 – American Association for Cancer Research Lifetime Achievement Award
*2017 – ISTT Prize from the
International Society for Transgenic Technologies
*2024 – Honorary Doctorate Degree, Yale University, United States
References
External links
Howard Hughes Medical Institute biographyMario Capecchi's Short Talk: "The Birth of Gene Targeting"* including the Nobel Lecture on 7 December 2007 ''Gene Targeting 1977 - Present''
*
ttp://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/41/concept/index.html Capecchi animation from Dolan DNA Learning Center's ''DNA from the Beginning''Interview with Dr Capecchi ''Futures in Biotech 63: How To Use A Mouse''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capecchi, Mario
1937 births
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Living people
Scientists from Verona
American geneticists
American Nobel laureates
Antioch College alumni
Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
Italian Nobel laureates
Harvard University alumni
University of Utah faculty
Kyoto laureates in Basic Sciences
Wolf Prize in Medicine laureates
Scientists from Salt Lake City
21st-century Italian inventors
National Medal of Science laureates
Howard Hughes Medical Investigators
Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
Italian emigrants to the United States
Homeless people
Street children
Massry Prize recipients
George School alumni
Members of the National Academy of Medicine
Recipients of Franklin Medal