Mary-Claire King was born on February 27,1946 and is an American geneticist.
41 Facts About Mary-Claire King
2.
Mary-Claire King was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called BRCA1.
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Mary-Claire King has been the American Cancer Society Professor of the Department of Genome Sciences and of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington since 1995.
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Mary-Claire King has received many awards, including the Lasker Award and the National Medal of Science.
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Mary-Claire King was born on February 27,1946, to Harvey and Clarice King of Wilmette, Illinois, near Chicago.
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When Mary-Claire King was 15 years old, her childhood best friend died of cancer.
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Mary-Claire King became interested in science in the hope of learning enough to prevent and treat such illnesses.
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Mary-Claire King received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Carleton College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1967.
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Mary-Claire King was accepted into the graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, and soon became politically active.
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Mary-Claire King helped to organize protests against US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1970.
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Mary-Claire King spent a year doing consumer advocacy work for Ralph Nader, investigating pesticide use and its effects on farm workers.
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Mary-Claire King had been introduced to genetics by professor Curt Stern, in the last class he taught before his retirement.
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Mary-Claire King's work supported Allan Wilson's view that chimpanzees and humans diverged only five million years ago, and Mary-Claire King and Wilson suggested that gene regulation was likely responsible for the significant differences between the species.
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Mary-Claire King completed her thesis in 1972, and received her doctorate in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.
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Mary-Claire King later learned that a number of her colleagues and students had either disappeared or been killed.
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Mary-Claire King accepted a faculty appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, as professor of genetics and epidemiology in 1976.
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Mary-Claire King remained at UC Berkeley until 1995, when she accepted an appointment as the American Cancer Society Professor at the University of Washington.
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Mary-Claire King served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2015.
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From 1974 to 1990, Mary-Claire King carried out years of painstaking research, seeking a genetic marker, an identifiable piece of genetic material, that tended to accompany the presence of breast cancer in families.
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Mary-Claire King's discovery paved the way for identification of the gene sequence.
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Mary-Claire King has studied the incidence of breast cancer in Palestinian women.
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The model and technique Mary-Claire King developed to identify BRCA1 has since proven valuable in the study of many other illnesses and conditions.
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Mary-Claire King's contributions have made it possible for people to be informed of genetic information that then can aid them in making choices best for themselves and for their future.
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Mary-Claire King worked on a project studying the mutations of genes linked to breast cancer inheritance in Nigerian women between March 1998 and 2014.
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Mary-Claire King's team decided to do this research on the grounds that more people die in Nigeria from triple negative breast cancer that is diagnosed at a later stage than other, more educated regions of the world, such as Europe or America.
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At the finish of this study, Mary-Claire King's team was still unsure of the reason for such high levels of Triple-negative breast cancer, since many of the people diagnosed were not showing mutations in the BRCA1 gene.
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Mary-Claire King's study supported the idea that genomic sequencing could be useful as a tool to help detect gene mutations early and be proactive in letting those who have high risks for breast cancer know ahead of time.
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Since 1990, Mary-Claire King has been working in collaboration with scientists around the world to identify genetic causes of hearing loss and deafness.
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Mary-Claire King continues to work with scientists Karen Avraham at Tel Aviv University in Israel and Moien Kanaan at Bethlehem University in Palestine, modeling international scientific cooperation in conjunction with conducting scientific research.
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Mary-Claire King has worked on the Human Genome Diversity Project, led by Luca Cavalli-Sforza.
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Mary-Claire King is well known for her work on the forensic determination of individual identity, in particular the use of mitochondrial DNA from teeth.
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Mary-Claire King was invited to participate in DNA investigations of the first analysis of Romanov remains exhumed in 1991 in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
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Mary-Claire King first applied her genetics skills to human rights work in 1984, when she and her lab began working with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.
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Mary-Claire King used dental genetics to identify missing persons, ultimately identifying 59 children and helping return them to their biological families.
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Mary-Claire King's technique, using mitochondrial DNA and human leukocyte antigen serotyping genetic markers from dental samples, proved invaluable.
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The Supreme Court of Argentina in 1984 determined that Mary-Claire King's test had positively identified the relationship of Paula Logares to her family, establishing the precedent for the ultimate reunification of dozens of families with their stolen children.
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In 1993 Mary-Claire King used the technique to identify the remains of individuals massacred in the village of El Mozote, El Salvador.
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Mary-Claire King has worked with numerous human rights organizations, such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International, to identify missing people in countries including Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Rwanda, the Balkans, and the Philippines.
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Mary-Claire King has been highly critical of genetic patenting, a practice which was ruled against by the US Supreme Court in 2013, on the grounds that "genes are natural products and cannot be patented".
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Dr Mary-Claire King has won numerous awards, prizes, and honors for her scientific and humanitarian work, including:.
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Mary-Claire King has five patents and over 250 peer-reviewed journal articles.