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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 a new voice - http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm janet paterson - 51/10 - endocarb/selegiline/fluoxetine [aka generic Sinemet / generic Eldepryl / generic Prozac] almonte/ontario/canada - [log in to unmask]