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fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

      In a Nature news feature [nature.com], reporter Ewen Callaway looks back at Dolly the sheep's legacy, 20 years after her birth with a series of reminiscences of those who were there.

Karen Walker, embryologist, PPL Therapeutics: On the day we made Dolly, we had such a rubbish day.

      Bill Ritchie, embryologist, Roslin Institute: It was 8 February 1996. I looked it up. We do know it was a rubbish day: we had various problems with infections and things.

      Walker: It's a shame the building has been demolished, otherwise you could see the room in which Dolly was made. I use the word 'room' loosely, because it really was just a big cupboard, which, when Bill and I were in there, you could just get two chairs and the incubator in.

      Ritchie: It literally was the cupboard. It was the storage cupboard at the end of the lab. When we got camera crews in later, they couldn't believe it, there was no room to shoot.

      Walker and Ritchie were part of a project at the Roslin Institute and spin-off PPL Therapeutics, aiming to make precise genetic changes to farm animals. The scientific team, led by Roslin embryologist Ian Wilmut, reasoned that the best way to make these changes would be to tweak the genome of a cell in culture and then transfer the nucleus to a new cell.

      The article contains reminiscences of about 10 of the people involved. It ends with Wilmut's comment: "It would be wrong to say my name's known all the way around the world -- but Dolly's is."

Original Submission