You’re a “Knockout!”
In 2007, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three scientists (Oliver Smithies, Martin Evans, and Mario Capecchi) for techniques that resulted in the first “knockout” mice in 1989. By extinguishing one gene at a time, knockout mice became an important tool in discovering what genes do, by noting their absence. Now it’s known there are “knockout” people—those rare few who are missing a gene from the human genome. One example in this piece is those people missing the PCSK9 gene, which renders them almost completely free of arterial cholesterol build up. Pharmaceutical companies hope to find more of these human knockouts and for that reason have begun assembling biorepositories of volunteers’ blood. Of course, it is hospitals that have greatest access to people’s blood, along with patients’ EMRs, and in due course, they may see that the biorepository is essential to making progress in population health. MORE
Image Credit: Regeneron and TechnologyReview.com