WHAT: Dr. Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh embryologist who made history last year by becoming the first researcher to create a living mammal by cloning from the DNA of an adult, will speak twice at UC Davis next week as part of the campus's Storer Life Sciences Lectures. WHEN & WHERE: Monday, May 18 2:15 - 2:30 p.m. -- photo availability, Dairy Goat Facility 3:00 - 3:30 p.m. -- news conference, stage of Freeborn Hall 4:10 - 5:20 p.m. -- lecture, question-and-answer session, Freeborn Hall Tuesday, May 19 4:10 - 5:20 p.m. -- lecture, question-and-answer session, Freeborn Hall VISUALS: Animal science students and faculty will show Dr. Wilmut young transgenic dairy goats born at the campus goat facility. (For more information see attached background sheet.) DIRECTIONS & PARKING: To the goat facility, take Interstate 80 to the UC Davis exit and go south on Old Davis Road. Cross the railroad tracks and at the blue-and-gold sign pointing to the California Raptor Center turn left onto the paved levee road. Continue until the road bears left at the raptor center. The goat facility is the next unit on the right, headquartered in the building marked V-1. Park near the facility out of the way of traffic. To Freeborn Hall, take Interstate 80 to Highway 113 and go north toward Woodland. Take the second exit, Russell Boulevard, and go east (right) into town. At Howard Way turn right onto campus. Park in the parking garage at your left. After you enter the structure turn right and immediately right again. Reserved media parking spaces will be available to the left at the far end of this aisle. To park free for an unlimited time, place a media business card on the dashboard. Walk one block further on Howard Way and you'll come to Freeborn Hall, a red-brick auditorium. Television trucks should request entrance to central campus at the Howard Way information booth. Park on North Quad, the street Howard Way runs into. TICKETS: News media representatives must go to the front entrance of Freeborn Hall at the furthest door to the left to receive tickets, which are required for both lectures. Ask to have your hand stamped if you expect to leave and return to the hall. The front row of seats in the hall is reserved for the news media. Background Information About Ian Wilmut Ian Wilmut is a staff researcher at the Roslin Institute, an independent, non-profit research center based in Roslin, Scotland, just outside of Edinburgh. Raised in Coventry, England, Wilmut, 53, now lives in Scotland. He earned an Honors Degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Nottingham and a Ph.D. from Darwin College at Cambridge University. His early research included developing techniques to keep frozen sperm viable. He was the first scientist to produce a calf from a frozen embryo in 1986. Roslin Institute The Roslin Institute is an international center for studies of farm animals and poultry, with major programs devoted to reproduction, development and growth, and animal behavior and welfare. Its mission is to better understand and improve the productivity, breeding and welfare of farm animals. The institute has more than 300 staff members, visiting scientists and Ph.D. students, but Ian Wilmut is unarguably its most well-known associate. He became an international figure in February 1997, when he led the first team of researchers to clone an adult mammal. The first clone was a lamb named Dolly. Instead of being created by the usual combination of sperm from a male parent and egg from a female parent, Dolly was created from the DNA of a female parent only. About cloning "Cloning" is the reproduction of genetically identical individual organisms. It is not a new technology. For example, it was demonstrated in 1958 that you can clone a whole carrot from just one isolated mature carrot cell. Artificial cloning is a valuable technique for producing healthy, uniform plants. Animal cloning has been used experimentally since the early 1980s. Those cloning techniques involve combination of eggs and sperm in the laboratory to produce embryos, which are then split to produce two embryos. The embryos are then implanted in surrogate mothers for gestation. The result is two individual animals of the same age with identical genetic makeup derived from two parents. Wilmut's cloning Ian Wilmut's team used a different material to produce the embryo. The Roslin Institute scientists took a single cell from the mammary gland (the milk-producing tissues) of an adult, female sheep. The genetic material, or DNA, from that cell was placed into an egg from another sheep. That egg developed into an embryo that was implanted into a third sheep. Dolly These implantations failed 276 times. On the 277th try, the embryo developed into a lamb and Dolly was born. In the most recent chapter of Dolly's story, the Roslin Institute announced last month that Dolly had given birth to a lamb -- this one bred by traditional methods -- proving that she was fertile. In December 1997, Wilmut announced the birth of two lambs that carried a human gene to produce a blood-clotting protein that helps hemophiliacs. Each lamb was cloned from one cell taken from a sheep fetus. Why did Wilmut clone? Wilmut's cloning experiments were conducted to devise methods for improvement of the efficiency with which transgenic farm animals can be produced. The current method of injecting DNA into embryos is highly inefficient in farm animals, which makes transgenic animal production very expensive. Wilmut demonstrated that a normal, living animal can be produced from a single cell ( a mammary cell in the case of Dolly). If that cell were genetically modified in the laboratory before being used to clone a new animal, the genetic modification would be carried to the cloned animal, producing a transgenic animal. Genetic research at UC Davis The UC Davis campus supports strong programs in animal and plant biotechnology and genetic engineering. Research in animal biotechnology includes the study of transgenic animals, which carry foreign DNA (often from another species) that has been experimentally introduced into their chromosomes. In plants, gene transfers are used to produce resistance to specific insects or disease, or greater crop yields, or more beautiful flowers. In animals, gene transfers could also be used to produce disease resistance, or leaner meat, or milk that is more healthful or better for processing into cheese and other dairy foods. Transgenic animals also are used extensively in biomedical research, and last year the campus established the Mouse Biology Program to enhance opportunities for researchers across the campus to use transgenic mice in research. Now under consideration is establishment of a Center for Genetic Engineering of Large Animals. This center would focus on the study of transgenic large animals as models for research in human and veterinary medicine, and genetic manipulation of large animals for agricultural purposes. Transgenic goats Young goats born at the Animal Science Dairy goat Teaching and Research Facility were injected with DNA as early embryos, shortly after fertilization. The embryos were then transferred to the reproductive tracts of surrogate goat mothers where they developed to term. The young goats will be studied to determine if they carry the injected foreign gene in their chromosomes. The specific gene is one that produces a protein made in the mammary gland. The aim of this project is to modify milk composition in ways that could affect manufacturing properties and human nutrition.