The discovery that living cells programmed with exogenous messenger RNA can make and correctly modify foreign proteins is, for four separate reasons, arguably one of the most important scientific advances of the last 50 years.

A vital question was the extent to which the living oocyte could carry out post-translational modifications and the answer, indicating near universality, began to emerge.

[10] One can argue that the discovery of the oocyte expression system has given rise to a new albeit minor branch of molecular biology, with a substantial number of scientific papers published each year ( please see reviews by Lane CD and Morel C, Bloemendal et al, Smith M et al and Jacobson A, Lane CD and Alton).

Whilst the expression system enjoys proven usefulness for receptor studies,[11] there is little direct evidence that mRNA therapeutics will have a general impact on medical practices.

[citation needed] Lane had realised that the oocyte system enjoyed enormous potential for the study of post translational events, and an early (1971) Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences paper with Hans Bloemendal, Anton Berns, Ger Strous and Michael Matthews focused on that which, in terms of post-translational events, the oocyte system could and could not do.

That which it could not do turned out to be extremely rare – the oocyte could even accurately modify honey bee promelittin made under the direction of injected venom gland mRNA[14] and could even, insert foreign proteins into membranes in a functional state.