Louise Tsi Chow | |
|---|---|
| 周芷 | |
| Born | Hunan, China |
| Citizenship | Republic of China (Taiwan) |
| Alma mater | National Taiwan University (BS) California Institute of Technology (PhD) |
| Known for | RNA splicing |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry Molecular genetics |
| Institutions | University of Alabama at Birmingham Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory University of California, San Francisco |
| Doctoral advisor | Norman Davidson |
Louise Tsi Chow (Chinese:周芷;pinyin:Zhōu Zhǐ)[1] is a Taiwanese biochemist and molecular geneticist. She is a professor ofbiochemistry andmolecular genetics at theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham and a foreign associate with theNational Academy of Sciences, known for her research on thehuman papillomavirus.[2] Her research contributed to the discovery of gene splicing, and in 1993, her collaborator,Richard J. Roberts, received theNobel Prize for the research,[3] leading some to assert thatChow should have received the honor as well.[4][5]
Chow was born inHunan Province,Republic of China.[3] Her fatherChou Te-wei was a well known economist who worked in the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of China on Taiwan and student to Hayek.[6]
She studied agricultural chemistry atNational Taiwan University, graduating in 1965 before moving to California to pursue graduate studies in chemistry at theCalifornia Institute of Technology, earning her Ph.D in 1973.[3] She then undertook post-doctoral training at theUniversity of California, San Francisco, researching the monkey tumor virusSV40.[2]
Chow and her husband, fellow scientist Thomas Broker, joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1975. It was here that, in the process of studying the genetic organization, DNA transcription, and RNA translation of adenoviruses, she and her colleagues discoveredRNA splicing in 1977.[2] This finding led to her collaborator, Richard Roberts, winning the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Phillip Sharp from MIT whose team independently made the discovery). Many feel that Chow deserved a share of the prize (seeNobel Prize controversy).[7]
In 1984, she took a job with theUniversity of Rochester School of Medicine, studying the genome of the human papillomavirus (HPV). Chow became a professor at theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 1993, studying genetics and virology, focusing on diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and AIDS.[3]
At UAB, Chow developed a method to produce large amounts of one of the most dominant cancer-causing HPV strains, HPV-18, in the laboratory, enabling her and her team to study HPV's entire replicative cycle.[8]
In 1993, her collaborator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,Richard J. Roberts, was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with researcherPhillip Sharp, for the discovery of RNA splicing. Roberts called the award a "tribute" to his co-workers, including Chow.[9] However, other scientists felt that Chow, who operated the electron microscope that allowed researchers to observe the splicing process, should have been included among the scientists awarded the Nobel Prize for the research. Chow told theBoston Globe that her contributions "were not trivial ... it was a new type of experiment and needed to be designed and set up."[7]
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