Women in Biology: Barbara McClintock - Essay Example

Women in Biology: Barbara McClintock Introduction Barbara McClintock was born on 16 June 1902, to Thomas and Sara McClintock. She was the third child and she learned to amuse herself nearly from infancy. This was possibly because her mother was very much pressured by her growing family. When she was merely four months old, her parents changed her name due to this strong trait. Initially, she was named Eleanor, however her parents decided that ‘Barbara’ was a more suitable name for a kid who portrayed as much power and autonomy as she did. Barbara discovered science and the delight of problem solving while in high school. Due to her love for science, she decided to study the subject in college. Each of her childhood personality had been supported and promoted, at least until adolescence. After that, Barbara’s mother became confident that she was fit into adult society (Gardner, 309). After finishing high school, her father was abroad, but right away when he returned, he encouraged his daughter’s aspiration to join college and she registered at Cornell University the next day. McClintock comprehensively enjoyed the liberty and sovereignty of college. She was chosen President of the Women’s freshman class, had a lively social life and played the banjo in a jazz combo in town (Booher, 1). She treasured the lectures from the start particularly in science, and was delighted at the chance to come across various people. Moreover, in her first few years of college, she dated a lot but soon recognized that those emotional connections could not last for her (Gardner, 309). In her mid-30s, she abruptly realized that what she had was a woman’s profession as a research scientist. She was already working with Lester Sharp in the botany section by the time she was officially graduating from Cornell. Barbara pursued graduate studies with Sharp in the botany division because the genetics division would not take women graduate students. She started her lifetime work with maize during that time. She was able to recognize the discrete chromosomes of the corn plant by their shapes, length, and patterns using a new staining method (Gardner, 310). She preferred the genetics and cytology of Indian corn or maize, as her research topic. Biology of Maize’s is multifaceted and geneticists had learned to utilize it as a dominant tool. Two of its most significant qualities as a genetic model organism are the fact that the direct offspring of a cross, the kernels, give a preview of the genetic structure of the following year’s crop. Second, the diverse maize tissues provide haploid, diploid, and triploid tissue, which can offer clues as to dominance associations and the consequences of gene dosage (Booher, 1). From the beginning, McClintock’s main attention and greatest aptitude was examination of chromosomes. No one had so far been able to differentiate visually the maize chromosomes when she first commenced her research. Lowell Randolph, her first faculty instructor, had been trying this for years. This was by using the ordinary practice of slicing and tinting chromosomes in their metaphase, when they are very compacted. However, he did not find any unique features on the chromosomes. McClintock discovered two innovations to address the problem within two or three days. First, she examined the cells in an earlier stage, pachytene, rather than the metaphase chromosomes used conservatively (Booher, 2). During the years from 1927 to 1931, Dr. McClintock worked with an aggravated group of young scientists at Cornell. They used many hours discussing the shortcomings of maize genetics. In 1931, Dr. McClintock and a graduate student named Harriet Creighton published a foundation paper on the chromosomal foundation of genetics (Gardner, 310). In 1942, she was given a one-year position at the Carnegie Institute at Cold Spring Harbor in New York, which afterward became lasting. During the next decade, Dr. McClintock discovered an exclusive phenomenon in maize. It emerged that certain regions of a chromosome swapped or moved to other places. Consequently, there was a resultant change in pigment production in the corn. The elucidation of her data was very difficult and Dr. McClintock, who now had several individuals with whom she could talk about her work, was worried that it would not be understood (Gardner, 311). McClintock had produced six articles within two years of finishing graduate school. She had established the right haploid number for maize, distinguished the chromosomes from each other, developed new systems, and allocated most of the linkage associations to a chromosome. Even though jobs were rare in these depression years, McClintock won a National Research Council fellowship. In those days, this was a great credit for a woman because men were three times more probable to win one. She used her time traveling between Cornell, Caltech, and the University of Missouri at Columbia and had some of the most fruitful years of her life (Booher, 2). The aforementioned phenomenon is nowadays referred to as genetic transposition and the moving chromosome elements are called “jumping” genes or transposable elements. McClintock’s greatest achievement is generally alleged to be the invention of these elements. By 1950, she was one of the stars of Cold Spring Harbor, with a strong status built on two decades of radical cytogenetic work. Her peers esteemed and admired her extensively. She was set apart from most of the other researchers for the reason that she used corn in her research. This is largely because maize was becoming conservative and viruses and bacteria were the modern models of choice. However, even though she was alleged as one of the great geneticists of the period, the reactions to her most well known discovery were frequently expressionless or unresponsive. Her peers considered her work as partially astounding and partly strange (Booher, 3). In 1951, at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, she presented a document on transposition in maize chromosomes. Nevertheless, she did not expect that her work would be discarded. She went into additional academic and professional separation due to this bitter discontent. She never again presented a speech at Cold Spring Harbor even though her work was later justified. Barbara McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 in gratitude of her groundbreaking work. She sustained her research at Cold Spring Harbor until her death in 1992 at the age of 89 (Gardner, 311). Conclusion Barbara McClintock was one of the greatest women contributors to contemporary genetics and biology. The information of her research and findings is of benefit to any student pursuing medicine or biology. Moreover, her life’s work can simply be integrated into any high school science class, when tackling main contributors in the history of genetics. In addition, her function as a revolutionary woman in a male-subjugated field is very striking and students ought to be sensitive of the implication (Booher, 4). Works cited Booher, Heather. Barbara McClintock and “Jumping Genes.” 2003. Web. Gardner, Alfred. Barbara McClintock: Geneticist, 1902-1992. 1997. Web. Read More