Keith Campbell (biologist)

Professor Keith Campbell is an English biologist best known for being credited with the main role in the team that in 1996 first cloned a mammal, a Finn Dorset lamb named Dolly, from fully differentiated adult mammary cells. The work was published in February 1997.

Campbell grew up in Birmingham in England. He got his microbiology bachelor's degree from the University of London and his doctoral degree from the University of Dundee in Scotland.

Keith Campbell's interest in cloning mammals was inspired by work done by Karl Illmensee and John Gurdon.

Working at the Roslin Institute since 1990, Campbell became involved with the cloning efforts lead by Ian Wilmut. In July 1995 Keith Campell and Bill Ritichie succeeded in producing a pair of lambs, Megan and Morag from embryonic cells. Then, in 1996, a team led by Ian Wilmut with Keith Campbell as the main (66% of the credit) contributor shocked the world by successfully cloning a sheep from adult mammary cells. Dolly, a Finn Dorset sheep, named after the singer Dolly Parton, was born in 1996 and lived to be 6 years old. Campbell has been attributed a key role because he had the crucial idea of co-ordinating the stages of the "cell cycle" of the somatic cells and eggs.

In 1998 Bill Ritchie and Keith Campbell created another sheep named Polly. She was made from genetically altered skin cells containing a human gene.

Campbell is currently (2006) Professor of Animal Development, School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham.

Selected Publications

 * McCreath, K.J., Howcroft, J., Campbell, K.H.S., Colman, A., Schnieke, A.E. and Kind, A.J. (2000). Homologous recombination in ovine somatic cells enables the production of gene targeted sheep by nuclear transfer. Nature 405:1066-90
 * Polajaeva, I, Chen, S-H. Vaught, T. Page, R., Mullins, J. Colman, A. & Campbell, K.H.S. (2000). Cloned Piglets from Adult Somatic Cells. Nature 407: 86-90
 * Keith H. S. Campbell. (1999). Nuclear Equivalence, Nuclear Transfer and the Cell Cycle. Cloning, 1: 3-15
 * Keith H. S. Campbell. (1999). Cloning farm Animal Species. Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology. 10:245-252.
 * Campbell K.H.S. & Wilmut, I. (1998) Nuclear Transfer. In Animal Breeding: Technology for the 21st Century. Ed: A.J. Clark (Harwood Academic Publishers). P47-62
 * Campbell, K. H. S. (1998). Cloning Dolly:Implications for Human Medicine. In ‘Fertility and Reproductive Medicine’ (Eds: R. D. Kempers, J. Cohen, A. F. Haney, and J. B. Younger) pp3-11. (Excerpta Medica: International Congress series 1183).
 * Campbell, K. H. S and Wilmut, I. (1997). Totipotency or Multipotentiality of Cultured Cells:Applications and Progress. Therio 47, 72.
 * Wilmut, I., Schnieke, A.E., McWhir, J., Kind, A.J., & Campbell, K.H. (1997). Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells [see comments] [published erratum appears in Nature 1997 Mar 13;386(6621):200]. Nature, 385, 810-813.
 * Schnieke, A.E., Kind, A.J., Ritchie, W.A., Mycock, K., Scott, A.R., Ritchie, M., Wilmut, I., Colman, A., & Campbell, K.H. (1997). Human factor IX transgenic sheep produced by transfer of nuclei from transfected fetal fibroblasts. Science, 278, 2130-2133.