Ryūzō Yanagimachi

Ryuzo Yanagimachi (Japanese: 柳町 隆造 Yanagimachi Ryūzō; August 29, 1928– ) is a pioneer in the cloning field. In 1997 his laboratory at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa successfully cloned mice using the Honolulu technique. The first one was a female named Cumulina from the cells that surround the developing ovarian follicle in mice.

Early and later years

Yanagimachi was born in Japan. He received a BS in zoology in 1952 and a DSc in animal embryology in 1960 from Hokkaido University. He then taught high school for one year because he could not find a research job.

Yanagimachi applied for a post-doctoral position with Dr. M. C. Chang of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He got this position and there discovered how to fertilize hamster eggs "in vitro." This work led to in vitro fertilization of eggs of human and other mammalian species.

In 1966 he returned to Hokkaido University as a temporary lecturer with the possibility of later being appointed to an assistant professorship. However, another person eventually got the professorship.

Yanagimachi ended up at the University of Hawaii in 1966 and has become a full professor of anatomy, biochemistry, physiology and reproductive biology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. After working for 38 years at the university of Hawaii, he retired the end of 2004 to become a professor emeritus, but keeps working with junior fellows.

He is married to Hiroko, a former child psychologist. She could not find work in her field when they came to the U.S. due to a language barrier, so she went to work with researchers in his lab as an electron microscopist. They have no children.

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.

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 were displayed at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.

Other jajor work before and after 1960

Before beginning his study of mammalian fertilization in 1960, Yanagimachi studied fish (herring) fertilization and the sexual organization of rhizocephalans (parasitic cirripeds). In fish, he discovered a chemotactic movement of spermatozoa into the micropyle through which the fertilizing spermatoon enters the egg. In rhizocephala, he found that adults are not hermaphroditic as generally thought, but bisexual. So-called "testis" in an adult animal is a receptacle of cells from larval males. His major studies after 1960 involved the analyses of the process and mechanisms of natural fertilization and the development of assisted fertilization technologies. His comprehehsive review of Mammalian Fertilization published in 1994 (In: Physiology of Reproduction, Knobil & Neill eds, Raven Press) is classic. His group pioneered intracytoplasmic sperm injection which overcomes many forms of male infertility. They were the first to produce normal (mouse) offspring using pre-spermatozoal cells such as round spermatids and spermatocytes as well as freeze-dried spermatozoa. It was announced in March 2004 that the Yanagimachi laboratory had helped to produce a live birth of a mammal other than a mouse from freeze-dried sperm. The rabbit kit was born at the Dr. Jerry Yang's laboratory

at University of Connecticut, but soon died because the mother did not care for it . The lab supplied the freeze-dried sperm.

Awards and honors

• Zoological Society Prize,Japan, 1977
• Research Award, Society for Study of Reproduction, USA,1982
• University of Hawaii Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research, USA,1988
• Marshall Medal, Society for the Study of Fertility, UK.,1994
• International Prize of Biology, Japan, 1996
• Honorable Degree of Philosophy from the University of Rome, Italy,1997
• Distinguished Andrologist Award, American Society of Andrology,USA,1998
• Induction to the Polish Academy of Scicnes, Poland,1998
• Carl G. Hartman Award, Society for the Study of Reproduction, USA,1999
• Honorable Degree of Philosophy from the University of Pavia, Italy,1999
• Pioneer Award, International Embryo Transfer Society,2000
• Induction to the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 2001
• Honrable Degree of Philosophy from the Hokkaido University, Japan,2002
• Induction to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Hall of Honor, USA,2003

External links

• Museum of Science and Industry exhibit containing cloned mice
• Faculty research page