Jon W. Gordon
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Jon W. Gordon
He helped make the first transgenic mice, then turned his fine glass needles to helping sperm reach the human egg.
Learning with mice. Jon W. Gordon completed his doctoral thesis at Yale University with Clement Markert, work that involved making chimeric mice. That gave him rare skill at handling mouse eggs under the microscope. In Frank Ruddle's laboratory at Yale he joined a project to put new genes into mouse embryos.
The first transgenic mice. In 1980 Gordon, Ruddle and colleagues reported that purified DNA injected into fertilised mouse eggs could be found in some of the mice born from them. In 1981 the two showed that injected genes could be passed on to the next generation. That year they coined the word “transgenic” for such animals.
Zona drilling. At the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York he turned to infertility. In 1986 he and a colleague used a fine needle carrying acid Tyrode's solution to dissolve a tiny hole in the zona pellucida of mouse eggs. With the hole, about a hundred times fewer sperm were needed for fertilisation, and the young developed normally. In 1988 the team tried zona drilling for couples whose eggs had failed to fertilise in earlier IVF. Some eggs were fertilised, but no pregnancies followed. By 1990 they found that partial zona dissection, the gentler mechanical opening developed by Jacques Cohen's group, gave better results than drilling with acid.
Helping embryos hatch. In 1993 he used mouse embryos with too few cells, which struggle to hatch, to study assisted hatching. Thinning the zona all round with acid Tyrode's solution restored normal implantation. Later he wrote about the safety of gene therapy for the germ line, and warned in 2002 that the micromanipulation of eggs and embryos could carry new risks.
Also see: Jacques Cohen
About the sources
- Myelnikov D. Tinkering with genes and embryos: the multiple invention of transgenic mice c. 1980. History and Technology 2019;35(4):425ff (published online 27 January 2020). Europe PMC PMC7035111 (Yale thesis with Markert; Ruddle laboratory; the word “transgenic” coined by Gordon and Ruddle in 1981; interview with the author 10 December 2011).
- Gordon JW. Micromanipulation of gametes and embryos may be a risk for human germ-line gene transfer. Fertility and Sterility 2002;78(3):455–459. PubMed 12215315.
- Gordon JW, Dapunt U. Restoration of normal implantation rates in mouse embryos with a hatching impairment by use of a new method of assisted hatching. Fertility and Sterility 1993;59(6):1302–1307. PubMed 8495781.
- Garrisi GJ, Talansky BE, Grunfeld L, Sapira V, Navot D, Gordon JW. Clinical evaluation of three approaches to micromanipulation-assisted fertilization. Fertility and Sterility 1990;54(4):671–677. PubMed 2209888.
- Gordon JW, Grunfeld L, Garrisi GJ, Talansky BE, Richards C, Laufer N. Fertilization of human oocytes by sperm from infertile males after zona pellucida drilling. Fertility and Sterility 1988;50(1):68–73. PubMed 3384120 (Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York).
- Gordon JW, Talansky BE. Assisted fertilization by zona drilling: a mouse model for correction of oligospermia. Journal of Experimental Zoology 1986;239(3):347–354. PubMed 3760806.
- Gordon JW, Ruddle FH. Integration and stable germ line transmission of genes injected into mouse pronuclei. Science 1981;214(4526):1244–1246. PubMed 6272397.
- Gordon JW, Scangos GA, Plotkin DJ, Barbosa JA, Ruddle FH. Genetic transformation of mouse embryos by microinjection of purified DNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 1980;77(12):7380–7384. PubMed 6261253.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
