John Gurdon
John Gurdon
Sir John Bertrand Gurdon FRS FMedSci, is an English developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. He was awarded the Lasker Award in 2009. In 2012, he and Shinya Yamanaka were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth2 October 1933
bit everybody lab
I get into lab early and leave a bit early, too. So I like to have an hour or two before everybody comes in.
cannot route
I think that I cannot immediately see the route by which we should really understand memory and the workings of the brain.
embryonic hence purified techniques transfer whether wondered
I wondered whether the nuclear transfer techniques could be used to introduce purified macro-molecules into an egg, and hence into embryonic cells.
accepted health human improve problems public relieve solving turned useful view widely
I take the view that anything you can do to relieve suffering or improve human health will usually be widely accepted by the public - that is to say, if cloning actually turned out to be solving some problems and was useful to people, I think it would be accepted.
cell whose
The aim of a nuclear-transplant experiment is to insert the nucleus of a specialized cell into an unfertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed.
Nuclear transplantation is a technique that has enormously facilitated the analysis of these interactions between nucleus and cytoplasm.
advances cells human involved parts prospect providing work
Shinya Yamanaka's work has involved mice and human cells, and advances the prospect of providing new cells or body parts for patients.
amount
There is no doubt that I was blessed with a considerable amount of luck.
attempts elastic extremely jelly layer surrounded unlike
My first attempts to transplant nuclei in Xenopus were completely unsuccessful, because the Xenopus egg, unlike those of other amphibians, is surrounded by an extremely elastic membrane and jelly layer that make penetration by a micropipette impossible.
derived embryonic feeding months obtained six work
Within six months of starting my Ph.D. work in 1956, I had already obtained feeding tadpoles derived from transplanted nuclei of embryonic cells.
advanced cell found normal nuclear starting transplant work year yield
Within one year of starting work, I had found that the nucleus of an endoderm cell from an advanced tadpole was able to yield some normal development up to the nuclear transplant tadpole stage.
cell early involve largely leading processes
As with most animal eggs, the early events of amphibian development are largely independent of the environment, and the processes leading to cell differentiation must involve a redistribution and interaction of constituents already present in the fertilized egg.
basic cell clear genetic health human originally pleasing purely testing turned types
It is particularly pleasing to see how purely basic research, originally aimed at testing the genetic identity of different cell types in the body, has turned out to have clear human health prospects.
best danger people science
There's a danger of some of the best people saying, 'I don't want a career in science.'