Female STEM Pioneers - Barbara McClintock
- Aug 12, 2017
- 2 min read
Barbara McClintock (1902 - 1992) was a scientist and cytogeneticist. She is most famous for her discovery of "jumping genes" or transposable elements (TEs), sequences of DNA that move from one location in the genome to another, which she won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for in 1983.
Barbara was born in Hartford, Connecticut on June 16th, 1902.
With the support of her father, a physician, Barbara enrolled at Cornell University after high school to pursue a degree in biology. She entered the only class in genetics that was open to undergraduate students like herself. When Barbara finished her undergraduate degree, she was invited by her former professor to participate in the one other genetics course at Cornell. The decision for Barbara to take the course led her into her future career in genetics.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York was where McClintock spent the most of her professional life, focusing on the genetics of corn and the relationship between plant reproduction and mutation. From the late 1920s on, McClintock investigated the "moving" of genes in chromosomes during corn reproduction. McClintock discovered two genes called "controlling elements", which controlled genes responsible for pigmentation, and that these "controlling elements" could move to a different site on the chromosome. The movement of the "controlling elements" would cause the behaviour of other genes in a close proximity to become active or inactive, leading McClintock to propose that these "transposable elements" were responsible for new mutations.
In addition to being honored with a Nobel Prize, Barbara had received a Kimber Genetics Award, Wolf Prize in Medicine, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Prize Fellow Laureate, Charles Leopold Mayer Prize, among many others. She was also given multiple honorary doctorates from respected universities.
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