From the start of the modern biotechnology, women have played a major role in the biotechnology field, developing and discovering key pieces for the advances in this scientific field. In the past three decades, it was observed a significant rise in the number of female graduates with life science degrees, as well as women gaining leadership positions in the medical and bioscience fields, either in academia or industry.
Here, we are going to show you some scientist women who have been in the cutting edge of Biotechnology.
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
Rosalind Franklin was born in London, UK, and was an x-ray crystallographer. In 1952, her name was known globally thanks to her notable achievement - the x-ray photographs she took of DNA. Actually, it was the first proof of the double helical structure of DNA, which provided critical data for Crick and Watson to build their DNA double-helix model.
Franklin was awarded The Nobel Prize, in 1962, for uncovering the structure of DNA, only after her death.
Margaret Dayhoff (1925-1983)
Margaret Dayhoff was born in Philadelphia, USA, and is known as the founder of bioinformatics – the pioneer of the application of mathematics and computational techniques to the sequencing of proteins and nucleic acids (like DNA and RNA).
In 1965, Dayhoff published the book “Atlas of Protein Sequences and Structure”, providing a collection of all known protein sequences. In 1971, she launched the first publicly available database for research in this area, which could be accessed by telephone line. A single-letter code for amino acids was one of her major contributions to the computer programming of protein sequencing.
Also, she was one of the first women to be elected secretary and president of the Biophysical Society.
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi (1947)
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi was born in Paris, France, and shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for helping to identify the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS in 1983.
Over the years, Barre-Sinoussi has made substantial contributions to understanding how HIV is transmitted between the mother and child, and the role of the immune system in responding to viral infection. Also, she has studied the characteristics that allow some HIV-positive individuals gain resistance to HIV without antiretroviral drugs.
Elizabeth Blackburn (1948)
Elizabeth Blackburn was born in Tasmania, Australia, and is a molecular biologists who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009, thanks to her contributions in the cancer and aging field.
She is best known for having discovered a particular repetitive sequence of DNA on the telomere, a specific region found at the end of a chromosome that prevents the chromosome ends from deterioration or fusion with neighboring chromosomes. The shortening of telomeres is associated with aging and cancer, and Blackburn also had an important contribution in this field because she helped to identify telomerase - an enzyme that helps replenish telomeres which get shorter every time a cell divides.
Mary-Claire King (1949)
Mary-Claire King was born in Illinois, USA, and is a human geneticist who is best known for having identified BRCA1, a single gene responsible for many breast and ovarian cancers.
Throughout her research work, King has studied the interplay between genetics and the environment on human disease, and the discovery of the "breast cancer gene" revolutionized the study of numerous other common diseases. Moreover, King has also worked in studying the genetic causes of other diseases, such as schizophrenia, hearing loss and deafness.
Indeed, King's contributions have made it possible for people to have more access to their genetic information, in order to help them make better choices for their present and future.
Jennifer Doudna (1964)
Jennifer Doudna was born in Washington DC, UA, and was the first to discover the basic structure and function of a ribozyme, a particular type of RNA that has the ability to accelerate specific biochemical reactions. This achievement helped her to be a pioneer in the invention of a new tool for gene editing that has substantially reduced the time and work needed to edit a genome – known by CRISPR-Cas9.
Due to the great ethical issues associated with this genetic engineering tool, Doudna has been at the forefront of public debates on this issue. Indeed, all of Doudna scientific contributions have led her to win numerous awards, and many now argue she should be nominated for the Nobel Prize, based on her CRISPR work.
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