Background
Susumu Ohno was born of Japanese parents in Seoul, of Korea, on February 1, 1928. The second of five children, he was the son of the minister of education of the Japanese Protectorate of of Korea.
大野 乾
Susumu Ohno was born of Japanese parents in Seoul, of Korea, on February 1, 1928. The second of five children, he was the son of the minister of education of the Japanese Protectorate of of Korea.
Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Tokyo U. Agriculture and Technology, 1949; Doctor of Philosophy, Hokkaido U., 1956; Doctor of Science, Hokkaido U., 1961; Doctor of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 1984; HHD (honorary), Kwansei Gakuin U., 1983; Digital Array Gas-cell correlation radiometer (honorary), Tokyo U. Agriculture & Technology, 1997.
The family returned to Japan after the war in 1945. He later became a citizen of the United States of America. Susumu Ohno married musician Midori Aoyama in 1951.
His passion for science derived from his lifelong love of horses.
He went to the United States in 1951, as a visiting scholar to University of California, Los Angeles, and in 1952 joined the new research department at City of Hope Medical Center, where he remained in active research until 1996. Ohno postulated that gene duplication plays a major role in evolution in his classic book Evolution by Gene Duplication (1970).
While subsequent research has overwhelmingly confirmed the key role of gene duplication in molecular evolution, research to evaluate Ohno"s model for the preservation of duplicate genes (now termed neofunctionalization) is ongoing and very active. He also discovered in 1956 that the Barr body of mammalian female nuclei was in fact a condensed X chromosome.
In Evolution by Gene Duplication, he also suggested that vertebrate genome is the result of one or more entire genome duplications.
Variations of this idea have come to be known as the 2R hypothesis (also called "Ohno"s hypothesis"). He indicated that mammalian X chromosomes are conserved among species. lieutenant has been referred to as Ohno"s law.
He also coined the term junk deoxyribonucleic acid for segments of the deoxyribonucleic acid that have no known function.
In 1986, Ohno authored a paper published in Immunogenetics that explored the relationship between deoxyribonucleic acid genetic sequences and music "The SARC oncogene, a malignant gene first discovered in chickens, causes cancer in humans as well.
When Ohno translated the gene to music, it sounded very much like Chopin's Funeral March". "An enzyme (phosphoglyceratekinase), which breaks down sugar (glucose) in the body revealed itself to Ohno as a lullaby.
''A violinist recorded the tune, and when kindergarten teachers in Tokyo play it, their youngsters yawn and willingly take their naps,''" said Ohno.
The biologist, with no formal training in music, "decided to assign notes according to the molecular weights" and "put the heavier molecules in lower positions, and the lighter molecules higher". With deoxyribonucleic acid being composed of four subunits, he mapped each to two positions on the musics staff, forming an octave. He found that the more evolved an organism is, the more complicated is the music
His ultimate hope was "to find is some basic pattern that governs all life.
.everything.".
Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science (Amory prize 1981). Member NAS, Royal Danish Academy Sciences and Letters (foreign, basic research prize 1998).
Married Midori Aoyama, January 7, 1951. Children: Azusa, Yukali, Takeshi.
