Dr. John B. Gurdon, a British biologist and Nobel laureate who in the early 1960s introduced a paradigm-shifting method of cell manipulation that led to the world’s first cloning of a large mammal, a sheep named Dolly, died on Tuesday. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by Ben Simons, the director of the Gurdon Institute, a research center founded in Dr. Gurdon’s name in 1991 at the University of Cambridge in England. He did not specify where Dr. Gurdon died or cite the cause.
An emeritus professor at the university, Dr. Gurdon was a giant in the field of developmental biology. His lifelong work in the study and manipulation of cells laid the foundation for stem cell biology and the discipline of regenerative medicine, an emerging process of manipulating patients’ cells to produce replacement organs or tissues.
Dr. Gurdon first came to global prominence in 1962 as a graduate student at the University of Oxford, with the publication of his now classic experiments involving the cloning of the frog species Xenopus laevis.
In that research, he extracted the nuclei from the intestinal cells of a mature frog, which contained the amphibian’s DNA. He then injected the nuclei into frog egg cells whose nuclei had been removed. The eggs efficiently “reprogrammed” the genes in the transplanted nucleus: They switched from performing the role of a highly differentiated intestinal cell to reproducing an organism, a process known as nuclear reprogramming.
At the time, scientists believed that a specialized cell, like an intestinal cell, was incapable of performing duties other than those of an intestinal cell. The experiment, in Oxford’s embryology laboratory, proved that cells retain all of their genetic information no matter how specialized.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post John B. Gurdon, 92, Dies; Nobelist Paved Way for Cloning of Animals appeared first on New York Times.
