Chinese American
Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...
cell biologist
Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living an ...
. He was the 13th president of
American Society for Cell Biology
The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a professional society that was founded in 1960.Shaoxing
Shaoxing is a prefecture-level city on the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay in northeastern Zhejiang province, China. Located on the south bank of the Qiantang River estuary, it borders Ningbo to the east, Taizhou, Zhejiang, Taizhou to the south ...
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. He did his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the College of Agricultural Sciences,
Zhejiang University
Zhejiang University (ZJU) is a public university, public research university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and D ...
. 1948, he went to USA, and obtained PhD from the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
in 1951. Hsu worked in the laboratory of Charles Pomerat at the
University of Texas Medical Branch
The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a Public university, public Academic health science centre, academic health science center in Galveston, Texas, United States. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTMB includes the olde ...
during the early 1950s.
Since the turn of the twentieth century, chromosomes prepared on microscope slides formed clumps that made it extremely difficult to distinguish them. Although the preparations made the identification of individual chromosomes difficult, by the 1920s, cytologists consistently reported a
diploid
Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, ...
number of 48 human chromosomes. In April 1952, Hsu discovered a technique—the hypotonic solution—that separated the clumped chromosomes, thereby allowing him to observe each one individually Even though he now could distinguish human chromosomes to a much greater degree than his predecessors, Hsu still reported a diploid number of 48 human chromosomes (see Figure 14 in his 1952 paper). The correct diploid chromosome number of 46 human chromosomes was first reported three years later by
Joe Hin Tjio
Joe Hin Tjio (; 2 November 1919 – 27 November 2001), was an Indonesian-born American cytogeneticist. He was renowned as the first person to recognize the normal number of human chromosomes on 22 December 1955 at the Institute of Genetics of t ...
and
Albert Levan
Albert Levan (8 March 1905, Gothenburg – 28 March 1998, Lund) was a Swedish botanist and geneticist.
Life
Albert Levan was born in Gothenburg in 1905, son of Emil Levan and Amy Gabrielsson. He was educated at the University of Lund, where he ...
.
Bryan Sykes
Bryan Clifford Sykes (9 September 1947 – 10 December 2020) was a British geneticist and science writer who was a Fellow of Wolfson College and Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford.
Sykes published the first repor ...
describes Hsu and the diploid chromosome number in his book '' Adam's Curse''.
Hsu was president of the
American Society for Cell Biology
The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a professional society that was founded in 1960.Houston, Texas
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
, USA.
See also
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Cytogenetics
Cytogenetics is essentially a branch of genetics, but is also a part of cell biology/cytology (a subdivision of human anatomy), that is concerned with how the chromosomes relate to cell behaviour, particularly to their behaviour during mitosis an ...
*
Karyotype
A karyotype is the general appearance of the complete set of chromosomes in the cells of a species or in an individual organism, mainly including their sizes, numbers, and shapes. Karyotyping is the process by which a karyotype is discerned by de ...