Editor's note: Deseret Morning News writer Lois M. Collins is in Sweden this week covering the awarding of the Nobel Prize in medicine to Mario Capecchi, distinguished U. professor of human genetics and biology.
STOCKHOLM — Mario Capecchi says that since he won the Nobel Prize for medicine, "the science hasn't changed. My lab hasn't changed. The things that count don't change."
But there's no question, he admits, that he's getting a lot more attention, and "that's a change. I'm having more interaction with the public."
In Sweden, at least, that means he's signed a lot of autographs in the past three days.
Saturday morning, in what has been a hectic schedule for the Nobel laureate, Capecchi met one-on-one with a handful of reporters. Afterward, this reporter tagged along as he went to the Vasa Museum to see the old warship, raised from the bottom of the sea and painstakingly restored some 333 years after it sank.
The conversation was wide-ranging, from a joking request to his escort that he please be seated by the prettiest princess at the Nobel banquet, to recalling how he used to create quite large stained-glass windows to a discussion of embryonic stem cells.
Capecchi, 71, is a soft-spoken man with a ready laugh and a quirky sense of humor. He also possesses impeccable manners, despite his laid-back personal style. His interests are broad and he counts among his friends both scientists and people who work with horses, one of wife Laurie Fraser's passions.
Though he was already experimenting with altering gene function, his work with embryonic mice stem cells to accomplish it began in 1984 and has never been controversial. "We use the mouse, so no one bothers us. With a human, you can't do this experiment. You can't make more humans, but with the mouse you can take it all the way and evaluate it."
"It" is what happens when you target genes, either disabling them or changing how they function. It is for that research that he shares the Nobel Prize this year.
He laughs when asked if he knew that the University of Utah has been on "Mario watch" for years, expecting him to get the Nobel.
"Yes," he admits with a smile. Unlike his colleagues, he never considered himself a shoo-in. "There are enough variables, and with any human enterprise, you can't predict." Because last year's award was given in a similar discipline and it typically jumps around, he wasn't even thinking about it this year.
His life has been unusually hectic since the announcement in early October. He's been to Rome, Boston (twice), Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., before coming to Sweden for 10 whirlwind days. The D.C. trip, where the Nobelists were the guests of the Swedish Embassy, was a high point, he says and included a "fantastic" dinner that provided him great opportunity to get to know and talk to other winners. The Americans also spent a few minutes with President Bush. National news reports focused on Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Most stories neglected to mention that others were even there, writing of the meeting of two political foes and the memory of the "hanging chad."
In Stockholm, Capecchi's been busy with dinners and rehearsals, his Nobel lecture, a press conference, tuxedo fitting, receptions, private dinners and other obligations. Capecchi and Fraser opted to take a break and forgo the Nobel concert Saturday night. This morning, he'll join the other honorees to tape "Nobel Minds," a televised discussion, then have lunch with the U.S. ambassador before heading to another reception at the Nordic Museum and a private dinner. That doesn't count preparation for the big day Monday, when rehearsal leads to the actual awards presentation and a very formal Nobel banquet.
Even after, he has obligations, including visiting a group of eighth-graders, a royal dinner and arranging to collect his share of the 10 million kronor prize — he'll get roughly $533,000 dollars. He's quick to point out, though, that he'll give Uncle Sam about half of that, a tax windfall only America takes.
As for the future, he's always expanding his experiments and, at an age when many people retire, Capecchi's looking forward to another 20 years.
"Every time I ask a question and answer it, there are always 20 more questions," he says. One new direction is looking at mouse behavior. In his lab, they've made mice with behavior similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder. What they find will likely translate to humans, because it's already proven that "it's always the same genes" involved in OCD in both species.
He's also interested in exploring "what makes us different," not just "how are we the same?"
A university is ideal for such research, he notes. Because graduate students and post-doctoral researchers (he has five of the former and 10 of the latter) work there for five years, then leave, that means there are always fresh ideas and new perspectives, something not true of corporate culture, which can become entrenched in only one way of looking at things.
He's a bargain for the U., bringing in grants to fund his research and buy his equipment (his take-home share of the Nobel wouldn't cover the cost of one of his microscopes). The U., in turn, gives him "great freedom" to pursue the scientific questions that interest him, he says.
Over the years, he's intentionally kept his scientific interests broad. "If you start and stay in one field, you go to the same meetings as everyone else. My advantage is that I'm naive and go into the field without all the prejudices or the background."
So what does he do for fun? The same thing.
"The nice thing about science is that it's constantly changing. And past accomplishments don't mean anything. It's what you're working on now."
E-mail: lois@desnews.com