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Veterinary researcher who cloned mule dies
By KEITH RIDLER Associated Press Writer
Updated: 08/23/2009 06:52:18 PM EDT
BOISE, Idaho—Gordon Woods, a veterinary scientist who helped create Idaho Gem, the
world's first cloned mule, has died. He was 57.
Woods passed away unexpectedly Thursday, said Dell Rae Moellenberg, a spokeswoman at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., where Woods was a professor in the College of
Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Woods died at the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colo. Moellenberg said the
family has asked for confidentiality, and she declined to provide additional details.
"He was a brilliant scientist," said Dirk Vanderwall, who worked with Woods on the
mule-cloning project at the University of Idaho, and who is now an associate professor and
chief of the Section of Reproduction at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of
Pennsylvania. "Over the last 30 years he's conducted groundbreaking research in several
different areas."
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In 2003, Woods, Vanderwall and Ken White of Utah State University led a team that cloned
Idaho Gem as part of a larger project intended to better understand human diseases.
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The University of Idaho "beat a number of other teams around the world trying to clone a
member of the horse family," said Bill Loftus, a spokesman at UI. "I'm personally devastated
by the loss and I know many of his friends are. He had a lot more to give."
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The mule clone, one of three produced at the university, went on to success on the mule
racing circuit in Nevada and
California.
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"It certainly made interesting headlines
in both the scientific and popular press,"
Vanderwall said.
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But Woods was looking for more than
just race results from the clones. Horses
and other equines have significantly
lower cancer rates than humans, and
scientists hope cloning will illuminate the
difference and provide research clues,
particularly into calcium's role in
diseases. Equines have much less
calcium within cell walls than humans.
"That certainly was another primary
focus of Gordon's," Vanderwall told The
Associated Press on Sunday. "To use the
horse as a model to try to understand
age-onset diseases in people. Gordon's
hypothesis was that excessive
intracellular calcium in human cells could be an underlying factor in age-onset diseases."
Woods had been continuing his research in that area.
"Gordon was so novel in his thinking along those lines," Vanderwall said. "It was his drive and
passion that was really moving that forward. It's just a devastating loss."
According to a biography supplied by the University of Idaho, Woods grew up in northern
Idaho and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Idaho and his doctor of
veterinary medicine degree at Colorado State University. He later received another doctoral
degree from the University of Wisconsin.
In 1986 he returned to Idaho and founded the Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory,
then joined the University of Idaho in 1988 as a professor in the Department of Animal and
Veterinary Science. He left the school in 2007 to work at Colorado State.
Vanderwall said Woods had a dry sense of humor and loved hiking with his family.
8/25/2009 9:11 AM
Veterinary researcher who cloned mule dies - The York Daily Record
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http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_13189518
Vanderwall said Woods is survived by his wife and four adult children.
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The Lewiston Tribune reported that a funeral for Woods is planned for 11 a.m. Wednesday at
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Stake Center in Moscow.
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