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Ryuzo Yanagimachi - Cloning

Ryuzo Yanagimachi - Cloning: Encyclopedia II - Ryuzo Yanagimachi - Cloning

In July 1998 the Yanagimachi laboratory published work in Nature on cloning mice from adult cells. Yanagimachi named the new cloning technique they had created to do this work the "Honolulu technique". The first mouse born was named Cumulina, after the cumulus cells whose nuclei were used to clone her. At the time of the publication of this work over fifty mice spanning three generations had been produced through this technique. This work was done by an international team of scientists dubbed "Team Yanagimachi" or "Team Yana" f ...

Ryuzo Yanagimachi: Encyclopedia II - Ryuzo Yanagimachi - Cloning

Ryuzo Yanagimachi - Cloning

In July 1998 the Yanagimachi laboratory published work in Nature on cloning mice from adult cells. Yanagimachi named the new cloning technique they had created to do this work the "Honolulu technique". The first mouse born was named Cumulina, after the cumulus cells whose nuclei were used to clone her. At the time of the publication of this work over fifty mice spanning three generations had been produced through this technique.

This work was done by an international team of scientists dubbed "Team Yanagimachi" or "Team Yana" for short. This team included co-authors Teruhiko "Teru" Wakayama (also a native of Japan), Anthony "Tony" Perry (United Kingdom), Maurizio Zuccotti (Italy), and K. R. Johnson (United States).

The Yanagimachi laboratory moved from the warehouse which had housed it for over thirty years into the newly created Institute for Biogenesis Research in the biomedical tower of the John A. Burns School of Medicine. Money and renown from the opportunities opened up by the Nature article made the institute possible.

Yanagimachi was made director of the institute and appointed Perry and Wakayama as heads of two of the institute's five research units. Wakayama had been a post-doctoral fellow and Perry (a British citizen) a European fellow when they did the cloning work with Yanagimachi. Perry soon left the university in a dispute over intellectual rights to the cloning technique. Wakayama left for a position at the Rockefeller University in 1999. In 2002, both Perry and Wakayama were recruited by the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.[1]

The Yanagimachi laboratory continues to make advances in cloning. The first male animal cloned from adult cells was announced in 1999. In 2004 the laboratory participated in the cloning of an infertile male mouse. This advance may be used to produce many infertile animals for use in research in human infertility.

Mice cloned by the Honolulu technique have been on display at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.

Yanagimachi had been intending to write a book about his life's work. Unfortunately many of his original notes were lost in the October 2004 flood at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, which damaged many buildings on campus including the one housing his laboratories. This flood caused over US $2 million worth of damage to the Yanagimachi laboratories alone.