英文訃告【范本】

　　康奈爾大學(xué)訃告(英文)

　　Feb. 14, 2xxx　　

        Ray Wu, Cornell's acclaimed pioneer of genetic engineering and developer of widely grown, hardy rice, dies at 79

　　Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

　　Ray J. Wu, Cornell professor of molecular biology and genetics, who was widely recognized as one of the fathers of plant genetic engineering, from which sprang the development of widely grown rice plants resistant to pests, drought and salt, died at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca Feb. 10. He was 79.

　　The cause of death was cardiac arrest.

　　In 1970 Wu developed the first method for sequencing DNA and some of the fundamental tools for DNA cloning (sequencing involves determining the base sequence in a DNA molecule). After several innovative modifications by other scientists to greatly speed up the process, the same strategy is still being used today, and led to the DNA sequence determination of the entire genomes of rice and human, among other organisms -- helping scientists to understand different genetic traits.

　　Born in China and educated in the United States, Wu was a scientific adviser to the governments of both China and Taiwan. As such he exerted great influence on U.S.-Chinese cooperation in biological science and education.

　　At Cornell, in 1999 he committed to a gift of $500,000 to establish the Ray Wu Graduate Fellowship in Molecular Biology and Genetics to support a first-year graduate student. He funded the gift over the next five years to create a permanent endowment to support one graduate student each year in the field of molecular biology and genetics.

　　Following his pioneering work in the 1980s on the development of efficient transformation systems for rice, Wu and his group genetically engineered rice plants resistant to pests, drought and salt. A gene from the potato, called proteinase inhibitor II (or PIN-II), caused the rice plants to produce a protein that interferes with the digestive process of the pink stem borer, causing the insect to eat less, thus reducing plant damage. In a second study, a barley gene enabled rice plants to produce a protein that makes them salt- and drought-resistant so that they grow in saline conditions and recover quickly from dry conditions.