UH guest helped
clone Dolly the sheepIan Wilmut will present a free
talk at the Manoa campus
The leader of the team that produced Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, will give a public lecture this week at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
Ian Wilmut, professor and head of the Department of Gene Expression and Development at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, will speak on "Cloning in Biology and Medicine" at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Campus Center Ballroom.
His free talk is open to the public as part of the UH-Manoa Distinguished Lecture Series.
Hosting Wilmut will be his friend and colleague, Ryuzo Yanagimachi, the UH-Manoa scientist whose group in 1998 cloned five generations of female mice and the first male mouse.
Wilmut's work led to the birth of Dolly in 1996. She died at age 6 in February 2003.
Research by "Yana's team" resulted in Cumulina, the first cloned mouse. Yanagimachi said his team probably wouldn't have cloned the mouse if it hadn't been for Dolly. "People cast doubt on it. We proved we could do it," he said at the time.
A professor of anatomy and reproductive biology, Yanagimachi directs the Institute for Biogenesis Research in the John A. Burns School of Medicine. Wilmut's visit here is sponsored by the school and the institute.
Wilmut was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1997.
He is continuing work on methods for cloning and genetic modification of animals. His work focuses on cloning human embryos to provide stem cells for the treatment of degenerative disorders, such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease.
He has been a strong advocate of the technology for medical benefits, giving public lectures on the subject and participating in panel discussions on potential uses and misuses of cloning.