article co-authored by Gurdon:
Animal view of different embryos developing in
Xenopus laevis eggs: a
diploid laevis x laevis is shown on the top, cleaving and entering
gastrulation about 50 min earlier than
haploid [laevis] x laevis (middle) and
[laevis] x tropicalis cybrid (bottom) embryos.
Nuclear transfer In 1958, Gurdon, then at the
University of Oxford, successfully
cloned a frog using intact
nuclei from the somatic cells of a
Xenopus tadpole. This work was an important extension of work of
Briggs and
King in 1952 on transplanting nuclei from embryonic
blastula cells and the successful induction of
polyploidy in the
stickleback,
Gasterosteus aculatus, in 1956 by
Har Swarup reported in
Nature. At that time he could not conclusively show that the transplanted nuclei derived from a fully
differentiated cell. This was finally shown in 1975 by a group working at the
Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland. (from the ancient Greek word
κλών (klōn, "twig")) had already been in use since the beginning of the 20th century in reference to plants. In 1963 the British biologist
J. B. S. Haldane, in describing Gurdon's results, became one of the first to use the word "clone" in reference to animals.
Messenger RNA expression Gurdon and colleagues also pioneered the use of
Xenopus (genus of highly aquatic frog) eggs and oocytes to translate microinjected
messenger RNA molecules, a technique which has been widely used to identify the proteins encoded and to study their function.
Later career Gurdon's later research had focused on analysing intercellular signalling factors involved in
cell differentiation, and on elucidating the mechanisms involved in
reprogramming the nucleus in transplantation experiments, including the role of histone variants, and
demethylation of the transplanted DNA. ==Politics and religion==