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McClintock earned a PhD in botany in 1927 from Cornell University, where he later led the corn cytogenetics group, his field of interest throughout his career.
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United States Hartford, Connecticut, United States -
In the late 1920s, he studied changes in chromosomes during maize breeding, showing through microscopy methods developed in his laboratory such fundamental processes as genetic recombination that occurs during meiosis.
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His interest in genetics awakened in 1921 during the first course of that subject; this, led by plant breeder and geneticist C. B. Hutchison, was similar to that offered at Harvard University
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Due to the exceptional interest shown by McClintock, Hutchinson invited her to participate in the Genetics course for graduates in 1922
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Marcus Rhoades indicated that McClintock’s 1929 paper in the scientific journal Genetics, dealing with the triploidy of corn chromosomes, contained 10 of the 17 major scientific advances made at Cornell during the years 1929-1935
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In 1930 he was the first person to describe the crossovers that occur between homologous chromosomes during meiosis
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In 1931 McClintock published the order of three genes of maize chromosome 9 by genetic mapping resulting from the understanding of the mechanism of linkage and crosslinking
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In 1933, he conducted a cytogenetic study of the centromere, showing its organization and function
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McClintock recibió una beca de la Fundación Guggenheim que sufragó seis meses de aprendizaje en Alemania
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Due to this productivity, in 1944 she was recognized as an academic at the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, being the third woman to be elected
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At the suggestion of George Beadle, in 1944 he performed a cytogenetic analysis on the fungus Neurospora crassa; in this fungus Beadle had demonstrated the gene-enzyme relationship for the first time. The study was conducted at Stanford University, where McClintock determined the karyotype of the fungus as well as its life cycle. Since then, N. crassa has been a model organism in genetic studies.
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Due to the high level of her scientific work, she was awarded several times, entering the National Academy of Sciences in 1944
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His group was a mixture of plant breeders and cytologists, and consisted of Charles R. Burnham, Marcus Rhoades, George Wells Beadle (Nobel prize in 1958 for his work on genes that control metabolism) and Harriet Creighton. Rollins Adams Emerson, the head of the department, supported his work, although he was not a cytologist.
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(90 years old)
United States flag Huntington, New York, United States