Death at 79 of UK scientist who created a clone of Dolly the sheep

The University of Edinburgh said on Monday that British scientist Ian Wilmut, whose work was essential to the development of the cloned mammal Dolly the Sheep, has passed away at the age of 79. His passing on Sunday was reported by the University of Edinburgh, where he had worked for years before receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis. In 1996, Wilmut and Keith Campbell from the animal sciences research center in Scotland produced Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, which made headlines and sparked intense ethical discussions.

He spearheaded attempts to create nuclear transfer or cloning methods that might be used to create genetically altered sheep. These efforts resulted in the births of Megan and Morag in 1995 and Dolly in 1996, according to a statement from the institution.

Dolly was the first animal to be cloned from an adult cell via a procedure known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), and she was named after the country music star Dolly Parton.

This required extracting the DNA from a sheep egg, substituting it with DNA from a frozen udder cell of a sheep that had passed several years before. The egg was then electrically shocked to get it to develop like a fertilized embryo. There was no sperm present.

The discovery of Dolly raised concerns about human reproductive cloning, or the manufacture of genetic duplicates of either living or deceased humans, but mainstream scientists have disregarded this as being much too risky.

Wilmut, who was up close to Stratford-upon-Avon, went to the University of Nottingham to study animal science after beginning his studies in agriculture.

In 2005, he relocated to the University of Edinburgh. In 2008, he was knighted, and in 2012, he left the institution.