Nobel scientist looks to the future

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Oliver Smithies speaks fondly of Danish potatoes and beautiful equations. More on the potatoes later. Smithies is credited with helping to revolutionize genetic studies. For more than half a century his passion for science and tireless experimentation have revealed some of DNA's best-kept secrets and he's not about to stop.

"I don't have any intention of slowing down. Whether I will slow down, that's something I can't control," says Smithies who's now in his 80s.

Smithies joined the field in the early 1950s. That was around the time other biologists were just working out what DNA looked like and how it handed information from one generation to the next. He had already invented starch-gel electrophoresis -- a technique for separating molecules that is now used all over the world in labs studying genes -- and turned his attention to altering certain genes so that their role can be studied.

In the 1980s he had his moment of truth. After about three years of experiments, Smithies was in a dark room developing an X-ray film that would show whether he had successfully changed a mouse gene. Waiting for the film to develop, he says, was like flying through clouds heading for a runway, just as he was trained to do as a pilot flying on instruments.

"I remember thinking while it was developing that it was just like that coming out of a cloud and when I saw that film that was my runway." Watch Smithies describe his 'runway moment' »

That moment, achieving gene targeting in mice, earned him the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine. He was awarded it along with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans whose genetic research also led to discoveries that allow scientists to create animal models of human disease in mice.

Reflecting on their achievements, Smithies is happy with what it's led to. He says he still enjoys opening a scientific journal to see three or four papers that use the method he had a part in developing. "I think that the work has been used sensibly and produced good and useful results," he says. That's what he considers good science: trying to do something interesting, doing it well and honestly.

Sometimes you get it right and sometime you get it wrong, he says. But the important thing is to study what you enjoy and find interesting.

And if you're Smithies, those thrills can come in unusual forms -- a beautiful equation, for example, that is simple in form but complex in meaning. Or the image from a gel experiment that turns up neat rows of lines. "If it looks pretty it might not have the result you want, but you can get enjoyment from it."

His life's work, he insists, is not a sterile unemotional discipline. Instead he likens being a scientist to being an artist or musician -- the work is stimulating and exciting, but often fraught with frustration. And imagination is crucial. In his view, just as artists and musicians go on creating new works their whole lives, so too scientists can continue making discoveries. "The imagination is the same," he says, "That's what makes humans progress."

Smithies is now looking to discover the effect of multiple genes combinations. He has turned his attention and imagination to finding out what causes complex problems in humans, such as high blood pressure. And at 83, he still works hard and at the weekends. As he sees it, a very good Saturday involves going flying in the morning, taking his wife to lunch, and then doing some experiments in the afternoon. And it happens fairly frequently, he says. Watch Smithies talk about his work with genes today »

What he's been working on for some time now is how combinations of little characteristics in a person cause certain conditions. It's an important field, he believes, but it's difficult to study. Unlike single disease-causing genes, which modern techniques make relatively easy to find, these slight variations can be difficult to identify. Working out how they work in combination with each other is even harder, he says. And the more genes involved, the harder it gets.

A branch of genetics that Smithies isn't involved in but interests him is stem cell research -- the field that can involve the controversial use of cells taken from human embryos. He's so interested in the issue, in fact, that he tried to have his views, sent through an ambassador, heard by the U.S. president. Watch Smithies explain why he's for embryonic stem cell research »

"I asked the ambassador to suggest to the president of the U.S. that we maybe have got this the wrong way round when we talk about when life begins in this respect. As far as embryonic stems cells are concerned, my position would be and my argument would be: When does life end?"

Smithies describes life as being continuous since it began. Evolution has made it more complex, he explains, but even so, simple structures such as human eggs and sperm are alive. And so are fertilized eggs. So in his view, if they are not needed by couples trying to have children using in vitro fertilization, discarding these eggs kills them. In his view, using them to create embryonic stem cells keeps them alive.

"I'd like people to think of it as the perpetuation of life not the destruction because life was already in those cells."

For all his faith in the discipline, Smithies still reckons nature trumps science. "It's very difficult to beat nature," he says, "It's easy to damage, but not easy to make it better." So he'd rather try to avoid defective genes like the one that causes cystic fibrosis rather than change them.

And finally, remember Smithies' fondness for potatoes? Well, it seems the humble tuber provide a good form of starch for his gel-electrophoresis experiments. After years of carefully testing the starch from potatoes bought in grocers wherever he's traveled, he's concluded that Danish potatoes provide the best results.