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23 Jan 2009
![]() First extinct-animal clone |
First extinct-animal clone In 2009, the birth and 7-minute life of the first extinct-animal clone was described in the journal Theriogenology. A clone of the Pyranean ibex, or bucardo, was created using DNA from frozen skin samples taken in 1999 from the last individual before it died (6 Jan 2000). The mother was a closely-related subspecies of the Spanish ibex. The surrogate goat was implanted with an egg into which the bucardo's DNA had been inserted to replace the original gentic material. The research effort was the work of a team of scientists at the Center for Agro-Nutrition Research and Technology in Aragon, Spain. The team had implanted 208 embryos in different goats, of which seven became pregnant. Of those, just one resulted in a live birth, a clone that died within 7 minutes of respiratory failure due to lung defects. The bucardo thus went extinct a second time. |
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19 May 2009
![]() Robert F. Furchgott |
death Robert F. Furchgott Died 19 May 2009 at age 92 (born 4 Jun 1916). Robert Francis Furchgott was an American pharmacologist who shared (with Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad) the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that nitric oxide (NO) acts as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. Their combined work uncovered an entirely new mechanism by which blood vessels in the body relax and widen. Nitric oxide (NO), produced by one cell, acts by penetrating membranes and regulating the function of another cell. Nerves and hormones are well known as signal carriers, but this discovery was a totally new signaling principle in a biological system. |
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19 May 2009
![]() Herbert F. York |
death Herbert F. York Died 19 May 2009 at age 87 (born 24 Nov 1921). Herbert Frank York was an American nuclear physicist whose scientific research in support of national defense began in 1943 when he began work at Oak Ridge, Tenn., on the electromagnetic separation of uranium 235 as part of the Manhattan Project during WW II. In 1952, he became the first director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. He left in Mar 1958 to join the Department of Defense as chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and shortly became the Department of Defense's director of research and engineering (Dec 1958). He returned to the University of California in 1961 as chancellor and professor of physics. He was chief negotiator for the comprehensive test ban during the Carter administration. |