Joe Hin Tjio

Joe Hin Tjio
Joe Hin Tjio
Tâi-lô	Tsiúnn Iú-hing

Joe Hin Tjio
Joe Hin Tjio
	Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S
Alma mater	Bogor Institute of Agriculture
Spouse	Inga Bjorg Arna Bildsfell
Children	1 son
Awards	International Prize Award by Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation
	Scientific career
Fields	Cytogenetics
Institutions	National Institute of Health

Joe Hin Tjio (

University of Lund

in Sweden, where he was a visiting scientist.

Early life

Tjio was born to Indonesian parents of Chinese origin in

concentration camp during World War II.^[2]

Career

After the war ended, Tjio went to the Netherlands, whose government provided him with a fellowship for study in Europe. He worked in plant breeding in Denmark, Spain and Sweden. From 1948 to 1959 he did plant chromosome research in Zaragoza in Spain and spent his summers in Sweden working with Professor Albert Levan in Lund.^[3]

In 1953, a lab mistake involving mixing

HeLa cells with the wrong liquid led Tjio and Levan to develop better techniques for staining and counting chromosomes. It allowed researchers for the first time to see and count each chromosome clearly in the HeLa cells with which they were working. They were the first to show that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes rather than 24, as was previously believed. This was important for the study of developmental disorders, such as Down syndrome, that involve the number of chromosomes.^[4] Tjio made his discovery of the correct human chromosome count (46 chromosomes, rather than 48 as counted in 1921 by Theophilus Painter) in 1955 and the findings were published (with Levan as his co-author) in the Scandinavian journal Hereditas

on 26 January 1956.

In 1958 Tjio went to the United States and in 1959 he joined the staff of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in biophysics and cytogenetics from the University of Colorado. He spent the balance of his career at the NIH in human chromosome research. He was named scientist emeritus in 1992, but maintained a laboratory for the next five years. In 1997, he retired to Gaithersburg, Maryland.^[2]

Works

Tjio JH, Levan A. The chromosome number of man. Hereditas vol. 42: pages 1–6, 1956.

References

^ 李名揚 (July 2008), 台灣癌症醫療之母 (PDF), 科學人看 (in Chinese (Taiwan)), pp. 86–91, archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2012, retrieved 3 August 2011
^ ^a ^b Saxon, Wolfgang (7 December 2001), "Joe Hin Tjio, 82; Research Biologist Counted Chromosomes", The New York Times, retrieved 3 August 2011
^ McManus, Rich (11 February 1997), "Photographer, Prisoner, Polyglot: NIDDK's Tjio Ends Distinguished Scientific Career", The NIH Record, 46 (3), archived from the original on 21 July 2011, retrieved 3 August 2011
^ MacDonald, Anna (13 June 2018). "5 Contributions HeLa Cells Have Made to Science". Cell Science from Technology Networks. Retrieved 25 March 2020.

External links

Human chromosome count in MedTerms Medical Dictionary

[1] 李名揚 (July 2008), 台灣癌症醫療之母 (PDF), 科學人看 (in Chinese (Taiwan)), pp. 86–91, archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2012, retrieved 3 August 2011

[NYT-2] Saxon, Wolfgang (7 December 2001), "Joe Hin Tjio, 82; Research Biologist Counted Chromosomes", The New York Times, retrieved 3 August 2011

[NIHRecord-3] McManus, Rich (11 February 1997), "Photographer, Prisoner, Polyglot: NIDDK's Tjio Ends Distinguished Scientific Career", The NIH Record, 46 (3), archived from the original on 21 July 2011, retrieved 3 August 2011

[4] MacDonald, Anna (13 June 2018). "5 Contributions HeLa Cells Have Made to Science". Cell Science from Technology Networks. Retrieved 25 March 2020.

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