Sir John joked that his school report seemed to provoke more comment than his basic research work which led 50 years later to the Nobel Prize. The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent".
The Nobel Foundation summarises his talk, stating that "John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, he replaced the immature cell nucleus in an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole. The DNA of the mature cell still had all the information needed to develop all cells in the frog."
An audience of 80 senior manufacturers and entrepreneurs, including Sir Michael Marshall, Lord Sainsbury, Professor Sir Mike Gregory, Sir Robin Saxby, Phil O'Donovan and Matthew Bullock, was highly appreciative of the appearance and talk by Sir John.
All PDFs available from the conference and summary notes will be available at the
Legacy website for 10th Anniversary HVM Conference
from 22 November 2012. More news from the HVM Conference to follow.
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