Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock | |
---|---|
MS , PhD) | |
Known for | Work in genetic structure of maize and corn |
Awards | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Cytogenetics (genetics scientist) |
Institutions | |
Thesis | A Cytological and Genetical Study of Triploid Maize (1927) |
Signature | |
Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 – September 2, 1992) was an American scientist and
During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered
Later, she made an extensive study of the cytogenetics and ethnobotany of maize races from South America. McClintock's research became well understood in the 1960s and 1970s, as other scientists confirmed the mechanisms of genetic change and protein expression that she had demonstrated in her maize research in the 1940s and 1950s. Awards and recognition for her contributions to the field followed, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to her in 1983 for the discovery of genetic transposition; as of 2023, she remains the only woman who has received an unshared Nobel Prize in that category.[2]
Early life
Barbara McClintock was born Eleanor McClintock on June 16, 1902, in Hartford, Connecticut,[3][4] the third of four children born to homeopathic physician Thomas Henry McClintock and Sara Handy McClintock.[5] Thomas McClintock was the child of British immigrants. Marjorie, the oldest child, was born in October 1898; Mignon, the second daughter, was born in November 1900. The youngest, Malcolm Rider (called Tom), was born 18 months after Barbara. When she was a young girl, her parents determined that Eleanor, a "feminine" and "delicate" name, was not appropriate for her, and chose Barbara instead.[4][6] McClintock was an independent child beginning at a very young age, a trait she later identified as her "capacity to be alone". From the age of three until she began school, McClintock lived with an aunt and uncle in Brooklyn, New York, in order to reduce the financial burden on her parents while her father established his medical practice. She was described as a solitary and independent child. She was close to her father, but had a difficult relationship with her mother, tension that began when she was young.[4][6]
The McClintock family moved to Brooklyn in 1908 and McClintock completed her secondary education there at Erasmus Hall High School;[6][7] she graduated early in 1919.[3] She discovered her love of science and reaffirmed her solitary personality during high school.[4] She wanted to continue her studies at Cornell University's College of Agriculture. Her mother resisted sending McClintock to college for fear that she would be unmarriageable, a common attitude at the time.[6] McClintock was almost prevented from starting college, but her father allowed her to just before registration began, and she matriculated at Cornell in 1919.[8][9]
Education and research at Cornell
McClintock began her studies at Cornell's
During her graduate studies and postgraduate appointment as a botany instructor, McClintock was instrumental in assembling a group that studied the new field of
She also worked as a research assistant for Lowell Fitz Randolph and then for Lester W. Sharp, both Cornell botanists.[20]
McClintock's cytogenetic research focused on developing ways to visualize and characterize maize chromosomes. This particular part of her work influenced a generation of students, as it was included in most textbooks. She also developed a technique using carmine staining to visualize maize chromosomes, and showed for the first time the morphology of the 10 maize chromosomes. This discovery was made because she observed cells from the microspore as opposed to the root tip.[18][21] By studying the morphology of the chromosomes, McClintock was able to link specific chromosome groups of traits that were inherited together.[22] Marcus Rhoades noted that McClintock's 1929 Genetics paper on the characterization of triploid maize chromosomes triggered scientific interest in maize cytogenetics, and attributed to her 10 of the 17 significant advances in the field that were made by Cornell scientists between 1929 and 1935.[23]
In 1930, McClintock was the first person to describe the cross-shaped interaction of homologous chromosomes during
McClintock's breakthrough publications, and support from her colleagues, led to her being awarded several postdoctoral fellowships from the
McClintock received a fellowship from the
University of Missouri
During her time at Missouri, McClintock expanded her research on the effect of X-rays on maize cytogenetics. McClintock observed the breakage and fusion of chromosomes in irradiated maize cells. She was also able to show that, in some plants, spontaneous chromosome breakage occurred in the cells of the endosperm. Over the course of mitosis, she observed that the ends of broken chromatids were rejoined after the chromosome replication.[36] In the anaphase of mitosis, the broken chromosomes formed a chromatid bridge, which was broken when the chromatids moved towards the cell poles. The broken ends were rejoined in the interphase of the next mitosis, and the cycle was repeated, causing massive mutation, which she could detect as variegation in the endosperm.[37] This breakage–rejoining–bridge cycle was a key cytogenetic discovery for several reasons.[36] First, it showed that the rejoining of chromosomes was not a random event, and second, it demonstrated a source of large-scale mutation. For this reason, it remains an area of interest in cancer research today.[38]
Although her research was progressing at Missouri, McClintock was not satisfied with her position at the university. She recalled being excluded from faculty meetings, and was not made aware of positions available at other institutions.
In early 1941, she took a leave of absence from Missouri in hopes of finding a position elsewhere. She accepted a visiting Professorship at
Cold Spring Harbor
After her year-long temporary appointment, McClintock accepted a full-time research position at
Discovery of controlling elements
In the summer of 1944 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, McClintock began systematic studies on the mechanisms of the
She observed the effects of the transposition of Ac and Ds by the changing patterns of coloration in maize kernels over generations of controlled crosses, and described the relationship between the two loci through intricate microscopic analysis.[50][51] She concluded that Ac controls the transposition of the Ds from chromosome 9, and that the movement of Ds is accompanied by the breakage of the chromosome.[49] When Ds moves, the aleurone-color gene is released from the suppressing effect of the Ds and transformed into the active form, which initiates the pigment synthesis in cells.[52] The transposition of Ds in different cells is random, it may move in some but not others, which causes color mosaicism. The size of the colored spot on the seed is determined by stage of the seed development during dissociation. McClintock also found that the transposition of Ds is determined by the number of Ac copies in the cell.[53]
Between 1948 and 1950, she developed a theory by which these mobile elements regulated the genes by inhibiting or modulating their action. She referred to Dissociation and Activator as "controlling units"—later, as "controlling elements"—to distinguish them from genes. She hypothesized that
Her work on controlling elements and gene regulation was conceptually difficult and was not immediately understood or accepted by her contemporaries; she described the reception of her research as "puzzlement, even hostility".[55][49] Nevertheless, McClintock continued to develop her ideas on controlling elements. She published a paper in Genetics in 1953, where she presented all her statistical data, and undertook lecture tours to universities throughout the 1950s to speak about her work.[56] She continued to investigate the problem and identified a new element that she called Suppressor-mutator (Spm), which, although similar to Ac/Ds, acts in a more complex manner. Like Ac/Ds, some versions could transpose on their own and some could not; unlike Ac/Ds, when present, it fully suppressed the expression of mutant genes when they normally would not be entirely suppressed.[57] Based on the reactions of other scientists to her work, McClintock felt she risked alienating the scientific mainstream, and from 1953 was forced to stop publishing accounts of her research on controlling elements.[3][47]
The origins of maize
In 1957, McClintock received funding from the National Academy of Sciences to start research on indigenous strains of maize in Central America and South America. She was interested in studying the evolution of maize through chromosomal changes,[58] and being in South America would allow her to work on a larger scale. McClintock explored the chromosomal, morphological, and evolutionary characteristics of various races of maize.[59][31] After extensive work in the 1960s and 1970s, McClintock and her collaborators published the seminal study The Chromosomal Constitution of Races of Maize, leaving their mark on paleobotany, ethnobotany, and evolutionary biology.[60]
Rediscovery
McClintock officially retired from her position at the Carnegie Institution in 1967,[3] and was made a Distinguished Service Member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.[41] This honor allowed her to continue working with graduate students and colleagues in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as scientist emerita; she lived in the town.[61] In reference to her decision 20 years earlier to stop publishing detailed accounts of her work on controlling elements, she wrote in 1973:
Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled. It is now equally painful to recognize the fixity of assumptions that many persons hold on the nature of controlling elements in maize and the manners of their operation. One must await the right time for conceptual change.[62]
The importance of McClintock's contributions was revealed in the 1960s, when the work of French geneticists
McClintock was widely credited with discovering transposition after other researchers finally discovered the process in bacteria, yeast, and
Honors and recognition
In 1947, McClintock received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.[69] In 1967, McClintock was awarded the Kimber Genetics Award;[70] three years later, she was given the National Medal of Science by Richard Nixon in 1970.[64][71] She was the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science.[72] Cold Spring Harbor named a building in her honor in 1973.[31] She received the Louis and Bert Freedman Foundation Award and the Lewis S. Rosensteil Award in 1978.[70] In 1981, she became the first recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, and was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research,[73] the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal by the Genetics Society of America. In 1982, she was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University for her research in the "evolution of genetic information and the control of its expression."[74][31]
Most notably, she received the
She was elected a
The McClintock Prize is named in her honor.[81] Laureates of the award include David Baulcombe, Detlef Weigel, Robert A. Martienssen, Jeffrey D. Palmer and Susan R. Wessler.[81]
In May 2005 the U.S. Postal Service issued a panel of first-class stamps honoring Barbara McClintock, along with Richard Feynman, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and John von Neumann.[82]
Later years
McClintock spent her later years, post Nobel Prize, as a key leader and researcher in the field at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. McClintock died of natural causes in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992, at the age of 90; she never married or had children.[61][73][83]
Legacy
McClintock was the subject of a 1983 biography by physicist Evelyn Fox Keller, titled A Feeling for the Organism. Keller argued that because McClintock felt like an outsider within her field, (in part, because of her sex) she was able to look at her scientific subjects from a perspective different from the dominant one, leading to several important insights.[84] Keller shows how this led many of her colleagues to reject her ideas and undermine her abilities for many years. For example, when McClintock presented her findings that the genetics of maize did not conform to Mendelian distributions, geneticist Sewall Wright expressed the belief that she did not understand the underlying mathematics of her work, a belief he had also expressed towards other women at the time.[85] In addition, geneticist Lotte Auerbach recounted that Joshua Lederberg returned from a visit to McClintock's lab with the remark: 'By God, that woman is either crazy or a genius.' " As Auerbach recounts, McClintock had thrown Lederberg and his colleagues out after half an hour 'because of their arrogance. She was intolerant of arrogance ... She felt she had crossed a desert alone and no one had followed her.'"[86][87]
In 2001, a second biography by science historian Nathaniel C. Comfort's The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control challenged this narrative. Comfort's biography contests the claim that McClintock was marginalized by other scientists, which he calls the "McClintock Myth" and argues was perpetuated both by McClintock herself as well as in the earlier biography by Keller. Comfort, however, asserts that McClintock was not discriminated against because of her gender, citing that she was well regarded by her professional peers, even in the early years of her career.[88]
Many recent biographical works on women in science feature accounts of McClintock's work and experience. She is held up as a role model for girls in such works of children's literature as Edith Hope Fine's Barbara McClintock, Nobel Prize Geneticist, Deborah Heiligman's Barbara McClintock: Alone in Her Field and Mary Kittredge's Barbara McClintock. A recent biography for young adults by Naomi Pasachoff, Barbara McClintock, Genius of Genetics, provides a new perspective, based on the current literature.[89]
On May 4, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative postage stamp series, a set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Barbara McClintock, John von Neumann, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Richard Feynman. McClintock was also featured in a 1989 four-stamp issue from Sweden which illustrated the work of eight Nobel Prize-winning geneticists. A laboratory building at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory were named for her. A street has been named after her in the new "Adlershof Development Society" science park in Berlin.[90]
A 103,835 square-foot residence hall at Cornell University was named for McClintock in 2022.[91][92]
Some of McClintock's personality and scientific achievements were referred to in Jeffrey Eugenides's 2011 novel The Marriage Plot, which tells the story of a yeast geneticist named Leonard who has bipolar disorder. He works at a laboratory loosely based on Cold Spring Harbor. The character reminiscent of McClintock is a reclusive geneticist at the fictional laboratory, who makes the same discoveries as her factual counterpart.[93]
Judith Pratt wrote a play about McClintock, called MAIZE, which was read at Artemesia Theatre in Chicago in 2015, and was produced in Ithaca NY, the home of Cornell University, in February–March 2018.[94]
Key publications
- McClintock, B. (1929). "A Cytological and Genetical Study of Triploid Maize". Genetics. 14 (2): 180–222. PMID 17246573.
- Creighton, H. B.; McClintock, B. (1931). "A Correlation of Cytological and Genetical Crossing-Over in Zea Mays". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 17 (8): 492–497. PMID 16587654.
- McClintock, B. (1931). "The Order of the Genes C, Sh and Wx in Zea Mays with Reference to a Cytologically Known Point in the Chromosome". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 17 (8): 485–491. PMID 16587653.
- McClintock, B. (1941). "The Stability of Broken Ends of Chromosomes in Zea Mays". Genetics. 26 (2): 234–282. PMID 17247004.
- McClintock, B. (1945). "Neurospora. I. Preliminary Observations of the Chromosomes of Neurospora crassa". American Journal of Botany. 32 (10): 671–678. JSTOR 2437624.
- McClintock, B. (1950). "The origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 36 (6): 344–355. PMID 15430309.
- McClintock, B. (1953). "Induction of Instability at Selected Loci in Maize". Genetics. 38 (6): 579–599. PMID 17247459.
- McClintock, B. (1961). "Some Parallels Between Gene Control Systems in Maize and in Bacteria". The American Naturalist. 95 (884): 265–277. S2CID 56345866.
- McClintock, B., Kato Yamakake, T. A. & Blumenschein, A. (1981). Chromosome constitution of races of maize. Its significance in the interpretation of relationships between races and varieties in the Americas. Chapingo, Mexico: Escuela de Nacional de Agricultura, Colegio de Postgraduados.
See also
Citations
- ^ "Barbara McClintock". Nasonline.org. Retrieved April 25, 2019.
- ^ Nobel Prize.
- ^ a b c d e f g Lamberts 2000.
- ^ a b c d Comfort 2001, pp. 19–22.
- )
- ^ a b c d e f Keller 1983.
- ^ Boyer 2001.
- ^ a b Comfort 2001, pp. 23–27.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 215.
- ^ Kass & Provine 1997, p. 123.
- ^ Kass 2000, p. 64.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 216.
- ^ McClintock 1983.
- ^ a b c d Kass 2003, pp. 1251–1260.
- ^ Kass 2005a, pp. 118–125.
- ^ Kass 2007.
- ^ a b c The Barbara McClintock Papers – Cornell.
- ^ a b Kass & Bonneuil 2004, pp. 91–118.
- ^ Kass, Bonneuil & Coe 2005.
- ^ Colonna, Federica Turriziani. "Barbara McClintock (1902–1992)". Embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved November 27, 2014.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 217.
- ^ a b c d e f Fedoroff 1995, p. 212.
- ^ Rhoades.
- ^ a b Coe & Kass 2005, pp. 6641–6656.
- ^ Creighton & McClintock 1931, pp. 492–497.
- ^ McClintock 1931, pp. 485–491.
- ^ a b c Fedoroff 1995, p. 218.
- ^ a b c Fedoroff 1995, p. 219.
- ^ McClintock 1934, p. 294–328.
- ^ Green 1959, p. 1243.
- ^ a b c d e CSHL Biography.
- S2CID 13478874.
- ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Doudna, Jennifer. "By Studying Corn, Barbara McClintock Unlocked the Secrets of Life". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
- ^ a b Kass 2005b, p. 52–71.
- ^ a b Fedoroff 1995, p. 220.
- ^ a b c The Barbara McClintock Papers – Missouri.
- ^ McClintock 1941, pp. 234–282.
- ^ Selvarajah et al. 2006.
- ^ McClintock 1940.
- ^ Comfort 2002, p. 440.
- ^ a b Fedoroff 1995, p. 221.
- ^ Keller 1983, p. 114.
- ^ McClintock 1945, pp. 671–678.
- ^ Klug et al. 2012, pp. 128–130.
- ^ Comfort 2001, pp. 84–94.
- ^ The Barbara McClintock Papers – Cold Spring Harbor.
- ^ a b c Comfort 1999, pp. 133–162.
- ^ Goodier & Kazazian 2008, pp. 23–25.
- ^ a b c d Fedoroff 1995, p. 223.
- ^ National Academy of Sciences 2005.
- ^ Comfort 2001, pp. 102–115.
- ^ Klug et al. 2012, p. 395.
- ^ a b Pray & Zhaurova 2008.
- ^ McClintock 1950, pp. 344–355.
- ^ McClintock 1987.
- ^ McClintock 1953, pp. 579–599.
- ^ a b Fedoroff 1995, p. 224.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 226.
- ^ Comfort 2001, pp. 209–217.
- ^ The Barbara McClintock Papers – Origins of Maize.
- ^ a b c Kolata 1992.
- ^ McClintock 1973.
- ^ McClintock 1961, pp. 265–277.
- ^ a b Fedoroff 1995, p. 213.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 227.
- ^ Pray, Leslie; Zhaurova, Kira. "Barbara McClintock and the Discovery of Jumping Genes (Transposons)". Nature Education. 1 (1): 169.
- ^ Pray 2008.
- ^ Jin et al. 2003.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 22, 2014.
- ^ a b Fedoroff 1995, p. 229.
- ^ National Medal of Science.
- ^ "The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Detailswork=National Science Foundation". Archived from the original on September 11, 2015.
- ^ a b c Washington Post.
- ^ Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.
- ^ "Barbara McClintock". Nasonline.org. March 30, 2018. Retrieved August 19, 2018.
- ^ Nobel Prize 1983.
- ^ Keirns 1999.
- ^ Fedoroff 1995, p. 236.
- ^ Benjamin Franklin Medal.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
- ^ a b "The McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies". Maizegdb.org.
- .
- PMID 8122898.
- OCLC 29715247.
- ^ Esther Lederberg.
- ^ Keller 1983, p. 142.
- ^ Esther Lederberg Colleagues.
- ^ Comfort 1999.
- ^ Pasachoff 2006.
- ^ Berlin.
- ^ "Barbara McClintock Hall". Student & Campus Life | Cornell University. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
- ^ "3225-Barbara McClintock Hall Facility Information". Facilities and Campus Services. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
- ^ Kolata 2012.
- ^ "MAIZE, a play about Barbara McClintock". Cornell University. March 24, 2018. Retrieved November 21, 2019.
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- McClintock, Barbara (1945), "Neurospora: preliminary observations of the chromosomes of Neurospora crassa", American Journal of Botany, 32 (10): 671–78, JSTOR 2437624
- McClintock, Barbara (1950), "The origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 36 (6): 344–55, PMID 15430309
- McClintock, Barbara (1987), Moore, John A. (ed.), The discovery and characterization of transposable elements: the collected papers of Barbara McClintock, New York: Garland Pub., ISBN 978-0-8240-1391-2
- McClintock, Barbara (1953), "Induction of instability at selected loci in maize", Genetics, 38 (6): 579–99, PMID 17247459
- McClintock, Barbara (1973), Letter from Barbara McClintock to Maize geneticist Oliver Nelson
- McClintock, Barbara (1961), "Some parallels between gene control systems in maize and in bacteria", American Naturalist, 95 (884): 265–77, S2CID 56345866
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Archives and research collections
- The Barbara McClintock Papers – Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine.
- Barbara McClintock Papers, 1927–1991 at the American Philosophical Society
External links
- Quotations related to Barbara McClintock at Wikiquote
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, Barbara McClintock: A Brief Biographical Sketch
- Enhancer and Gene Trap Transposon Mutagenesis in Arabidopsis, comprehensive article on the use of Ac/Ds and other transposons for plant mutagenesis
- Barbara McClintock archive on New Scientist
- Barbara McClintock on Nobelprize.org
- Barbara McClintock on Pnas.org