Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang, who rose from poverty in rural China to become a cloning pioneer, died on Feb 5, 2009 after a long battle with cancer.
Yang was 49.
Yang was best known for the cloning of calf Amy at the University of Connecticut in 1999.Amy was the first cloned farm animal in the United States. However, Yang made many other contributions such as improving understanding of how old cells can become young again when fused into embryos or eggs stripped of DNA. His work at UConn showed products of cloned farm animals are safe to eat. He never forgot his roots in rural China, working to bring U.S. scientists to teach in China and forming a non-profit company which shipped embryos from champion dairy cows to farmers there.
Yang survived famine in China in 1959 and 1960 and as a teenager was resigned to a life tending pigs when the government reintroduced college entrance exams at the end of the Cultural Revolution. His scores took him to Beijing Agricultural University where a second test won him the right to pursue a graduate degree in the United States.
He excelled as an embryologist at Cornell University and was hired by the University of Connecticut at Storrs the year that Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland, setting off a furor over the ethics of the new technology.
After the birth of Amy, Yang laid the groundwork for an attempt to clone a human embryo, which experts hoped would create embryonic stem cells that are an exact match of patients.These stem cells, derived from a patients own cells, can enable doctors to treat a host of diseases from cancer, Parkinson’s Disease and diabetes. He also foresaw several promising new technologies that could accomplish the same goal without some of the religious and ethical objections.
All the while, Yang battled cancer of the salivary gland first discovered in 1997 and which eventually killed him.
Yang is survived by his wife, Xiuchun (Cindy) Tian, his son, Andrew, his parents, Wukui and Fengrong, his brothers, Huaizhong, Jizhong, Wenzhong, and his sister, Meiying.
In lieu of flowers, a fund has been established in memory of Dr. Yang.Please make checks payable to:The UConn Foundation, Inc., with "In memory of Dr. Jerry Yang" written on the memo line. They should be mailed to: The UConn Foundation, 2390 Alumni Drive, U3206, Storrs, CT06269-3206.
A private burial ceremony will be held at the Storrs Cemetery on February 19, 2009. A public memorial service will be held in the Rome Ballroom on the UCONN campus (Lewis B. Rome Commons, 626 Gilbert Road, Storrs, CT 06268) on Friday, February 20, 2009 at 10 am.
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