Grace Medes

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Grace Medes (born November 9, 1886 in Keokuk , Iowa , † December 31, 1967 ) was an American biochemist . In 1932 she first described the possible cause of the rare metabolic disease tyrosinemia .

Life

Grace Medes was born in Keokuk , Iowa in 1886 to William and Kate Medes, née Hagney . She studied at the University of Kansas , where she received her bachelor's degree in 1904 and her master's degree in zoology in 1913 . She then went to Pennsylvania to Bryn Mawr College and received her PhD in 1916 with a thesis on the larvae of the sea ​​urchin Arbacia punctulata . She then switched to teaching at Vassar College , where she became an assistant professor of physiology in 1919 . In 1922 she came to Wellesley College for two years and in 1924 went to the Medical School of the University of Minnesota , where she became Assistant Professor of Clinical Chemistry in 1925 . Until 1932 she researched the metabolism of the amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine . She analyzed and described the disturbed tyrosine metabolism in a patient for the first time and called the disease tyrosinosis . The exact cause of what is now known as type I tyrosinemia , a deficiency or absence of the enzyme fumarylacetoacetase , was not discovered until the late 1970s.

Grace Medes left the University of Minnesota in 1932 and went to Philadelphia at the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute (now the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research ). Until her retirement in the late 1950s, she studied the metabolism of the sulfur-containing amino acids cystine and methionine as well as fatty acids . She then worked for a few years at the Fels Research Institute at Temple University and returned to tyrosinemia. In 1955 she was awarded the Garvan Olin Medal by the American Chemical Society for her work . Grace Medes died on December 31, 1967.

Works (selection)

  • With Jesse Francis McClendon: Physical chemistry in biology and medicine. WB Saunders Co., 1925.
  • With Hilding Berglund u. a. (Ed.): The kidney in health and disease in contributions by eminent authorities. Lea & Febiger, 1935.
  • With Stanley P. Reimann: Normal growth and cancer. JB Lippincott Co., 1963.

literature

  • Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey (Eds.): The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Volume 2, Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-0415920407 , pp. 874 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grace Medes: Notes of the Life-Cycle of Herpetomonas Drosophilae, sp. MA Thesis, University of Kansas, 1913. KU ScholarWorks, accessed August 24, 2014.
  2. ^ Grace Medes, A Study of the Causes and the Extent of Variations in the Larvae of Arbacia punctulata. Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1916.
  3. ^ Grace Medes: A new error of tyrosine metabolism: tyrosinosis. The intermediary metabolism of tyrosine and phenylalanine. In: Biochemical Journal. Vol. 26, No. 4, 1932, pp. 917-940. PMC 1260992 (free full text).
  4. ↑ Teruo Kitagawa: hepatorenal tyrosinemia. In: Proc. of the Japan Academy, Series B. Vol. 88, No. 5, 2012, pp. 192-200, doi : 10.2183 / pjab.88.192 . PMC 3410490 (free full text).
  5. ↑ a b Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey (Ed.): The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Volume 2, Routledge, 2000, pp. 874 f.
personal data
SURNAME Medes, Grace
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Keokuk , Iowa
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1967