Cloning discussed at Dean’s Distinguished Lecture
“The amazing thing about cloning is that you don’t even need a sheep to make a sheep,” said Keith Campbell, DPhil, who delivered the 1999 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Campbell was part of the team that created the Scottish sheep “Dolly,” famed as the first mammal cloned from a single adult cell. “We start life as a single cell, which then specializes into different cells for organs and systems. During development, it gets instructions on what kind of cell to become,” said Dr. Campbell. Remarkably, he and his colleagues have proven that you can alter those instructions and radically change the outcome of the cell. Their proof is Dolly. Dr. Campbell joined the Roslin Institute in 1991, after nearly two decades of scientific experience. He successfully produced mammalian embryos by nuclear transfer and used this technology to clone the first mammals from cultured differentiated cells in 1995. Recently, his work has also resulted in the birth of the first transgenic mammal to be produced by nuclear transfer from a cell line genetically modified in culture. Dr. Campbell now works at PPL Therapeutics, where he serves as head of embryology. Here, he hopes to accelerate the benefits of transgenic technology in the field of human medicine. He believes there are many applications for this work including: the production of human proteins in mammals, use of animal organs for transplant in humans, and to produce models to study development, aging, diseases and genetic preservation.
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