Shy researcher with 'crazy questions' thought up mouse clones

NEW YORK (July 23, 1998 7:05 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) -
"Crazy questions" led to the cloning of 50 mice and the development of a
technique that could make cloning adult animals a common procedure.

Ryuzo Yanagimachi, whose lab at the University of Hawaii cloned the little
brown mice, says he encouraged the kind of free thinking that led a post-
doctoral student  on loan from the University of Tokyo to dream up the new
method.

Researchers around the world have praised the cloning of dozens of mice from
adult cells as proof the technique really works.

Teruhiko Wakayama has shared little of the media attention surrounding the
experiment -- probably because he does not speak much English.

But Yanagimachi, his supervisor, is quick to give the shy researcher his due.

"I didn't tell him to do it. It was his idea and I approved it," Yanagimachi
told a news conference Wednesday.

Yanagimachi is himself a leading researcher in fertility, who made headlines
this  month by freeze-drying mouse sperm, reconstituting them in water like
instant coffee, and using them to create mice. Wakayama worked with him on
that project as well.

A fertility expert who has twice won the International Prize for Biology from
his native Japan, Yanagimachi said he encouraged Wakayama to be creative.

"I told him: 'Don't be afraid of asking crazy questions. The crazier the
better."'

Wakayama took him at his word, developing in his free time the technique that
allowed mice to be cloned.

Cloning mice had been thought to be near-impossible, because of the quick way
in which their DNA goes into action after fertilization. Sheep are easier to
clone because their biology is different and cells are amenable to sitting
around in laboratory dishes.

In cloning, the nucleus, which contains the genes, is taken out of one cell
and put into a hollowed-out egg cell.

Wakayama's technique bypasses the complicated starving and culturing process
that helps trick this resulting cell into acting like a newly fertilized egg.
He used a tool that quickly injects the nucleus into the egg, and used a
chemical technique to activate the new cell and start it growing.

"He didn't tell me what he did. In August, he showed me a tiny little embryo
with a beating heart. He said: 'This is a clone,"' Yanagimachi said.

Not that he was surprised. He said the soft-spoken Wakayama had always wanted
to do something like that and worked hard at it.

"Cloning was one of his dreams from childhood," Yanagimachi said. "I don't
know when he sleeps. He's single -- he can do it."

The scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep in Scotland in 1996 have been
criticized for not duplicating their work, and for taking more than a year to
do the DNA analysis that proved she was indeed a clone taken from an adult
cell, rather than from a fetal cell, which is easier to clone.

But now that it has been done in mice, cloning could become a common
laboratory procedure used in agriculture, experimental biology and medicine.

By MAGGIE FOX, Reuters
Copyright 1998 Nando.net
Copyright 1998 Reuters News Service

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