Dolly, regarded as the most popular sheep in the world, is to be honoured as one of the unsung heroes of Biology, The Independent has reported adding that the sheep would on Wednesday get its very own blue plaque marking her short life in Edinburgh.
Scientists will be gathering on Wednesday for an unveiling ceremony at the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh University, where Dolly was born in 1996, through cloning by scientists, and lived till 2003.
The plaque will read: “Dolly the Sheep, 1996-2003. First mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.”
It is not the first time an animal has been honoured, according to the medium. Nipper, the black and white HMV dog, was immortalised with a blue plaque in Piccadilly, central London sometime ago.
Mark Downs, chief executive, told The Times they wanted to honour not just the sheep but the team behind the landmark project to create the first animal cloned from an adult cell.
“So many people were involved,” he added. “It seemed a bit unfair to single out one individual.”
Other Society of Biology plaques commemorate scientists including Dorothy Hodgkin, the only female British scientist to be awarded a Nobel prize, and fellow winner Alan Hodgkin, who famously conducted nerve experiments using squid.
Anyone is welcome to attend the free plaque unveilings, which are part of the ‘Biology: Changing the World’ project, according to The Independent.
Dolly the sheep, also known as the world’s first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, died in 2003, aged six after a progressive lung disease.
Her birth on 5 July 1996 was initially kept a secret while a formal scientific paper about the process that created her was prepared and the news did not leak until the following February, days before the document was due to be published.
She was named after the country singer Dolly Parton – because the original cell used to create her came from a mammary gland.