Word: benoit
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...heredity of an organism be altered after conception? This age-old problem has now been attacked from a new angle: ducks. The doers are Professor Jacques Benoit, who holds the chair of histophysiology in the Collège de France and has studied the reproduction of ducks for 20 years, and Pierre Leroy, a Jesuit priest-biologist and refugee from Red China...
...weapon in their research is DNA (desoxyribonucleic acid), a complex chemical found in the nuclei of cells and believed to be concerned with heredity. From the Centre de Recherches sur les Macromollécules at Strasbourg, Professor Benoit and Father Leroy secured a supply of DNA extracted from the genitals of Khaki-Campbell ducks, which are smallish birds with brown bodies and greenish-black beaks. Then they bought from a reliable dealer nine new-hatched female ducklings and three males of the Pekin breed, which is larger and creamy white, with an orange bill...
...days old, they began getting injections of DNA in their peritoneal cavities. That was last June. Nothing detectable happened until March. Then one day Father Leroy was leaning on a chicken-wire fence admiring the researchers' flock of Pekin ducks. He noted something new and called to Professor Benoit: "I think I have wonderful news...
With trembling eagerness the partners examined their ducks. One male and eight females were undergoing a strange metamorphosis. Their bills, which should have been the Pekin breed's solid orange, were turning greenish-black at the bases. Day after day the changes continued. At last Benoit and Leroy decided that they had new-style ducks that do not resemble their Pekin parents or the Khaki-Campbells from whose genitals their DNA had been taken-or even a hybrid between the two. Their feathers are soft and pure white instead of rough and creamy white, as in Pekin ducks. Their...
...beheaded, Eyobélé's prophecy was carried out. A bolt of lightning crashed into Eyobélé's hut, and a moment later nine women lay dead around the bier. Last week Bokouélé was a ghost village, in which Father Benoit Gassongo, the Roman Catholic priest and teacher, stirred among the vacant seats of the mission school and said his Mass in the empty chapel...