Magazine Calls Sheep’s Cloning Most Significant

Dolly, a cloned sheep that set off an international debate on the promise and perils of genetic manipulation, was selected by editors of a leading journal as this year’s most significant accomplishment in science.

Dolly’s cloning from the cell of an adult sheep “electrified both the research community and the general public,” said editors of Science, a prominent publication that features scientific research.

“Although animals had been cloned before, creating a sheep from a single cell of a 6-year-old ewe was a stunning technological feat that many had thought impossible,” the journal said.

Researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the cloning last February, when the sheep was seven months old. The famed animal continues to thrive, said Dr. Ian Wilmut, leader of the Roslin research team.

Dolly was created by researchers who took the nucleus from an adult sheep cell and put it into an egg from another adult sheep. The nucleus of the egg had been removed so that it contained no DNA.

Among runners-up to Science’s selection of the top accomplishment of 1997 were the landing on Mars of the Pathfinder spacecraft; discovery of genes that control the body’s perception of time; isolation of DNA from ancient Neanderthal remains; discovery of water on Europa, a moon of Jupiter; advances in understanding diseases of the brain and treatment for spinal injuries; and mapping of the genetic sequence of three common microbes.