"Gurdon's (1962) nuclear transplantation experiments showed that genes were neither lost nor permanently inactivated during development. Upon transfer of an intestinal cell nucleus into an enucleated egg, entire swimming tadpoles developed. However, the frequency of this event was low, unless nuclei were first injected into oocytes (DiBerardino et al., 1986), a step that might allow reprogramming by stripping the DNA of mitotically heritable regulatory influences. Thus, although these experiments provided strong evidence that differentiation was reversible, they did not determine whether genes were silenced by active or passive mechanisms in the course of development."
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University of Cambridge facultyNon-fiction authors from EnglandBiologists from EnglandNobel laureates in Physiology or MedicineNobel laureates from England
Original Language: English
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Helen M. Blau and David Baltimore:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gurdon
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John Gurdon
Sir John Bertrand Gurdon (2 October 1933 – 7 October 2025) was an English zoologist, who shared the 2009 Lasker Award and shared the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Shinya Yamanaka for stem cell research.
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