Jane Anne Russell

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Jane Ann Russell Wilhelmi
BornFebruary 9, 1911 [1]
DiedMarch 12, 1967 [1] (aged 56)
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
Scientific career
Institutions Yale University
Emory University
Thesis Carbohydrate metabolism in the hypophysectomized rat  (1937)
Doctoral students Barbara Illingworth Brown

Jane Anne Russell (also called Jane Anne Russell Wilhelmi; February 9, 1911 – March 12, 1967) was an endocrinologist. She researched pituitary extract. [2]

Contents

Education

Russell graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, California, in 1928, as the second best student in her class. At age 17, she entered the University of California Berkeley, and graduated in 1932 as first in her class. [3] She was awarded the California Fellowship in Biochemistry in 1934 and the Rosenberg Fellowship in 1935.[ citation needed ]

Russell obtained her PhD in 1937 working at the Institute of Experimental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley [4] on the study of pituitary hormones in carbohydrate metabolism.

Career

Following her Ph.D., she continued at the University of California, Berkeley doing post-doctoral research on a Porter fellowship from the American Physiological Society. [1] In 1938 she moved to Yale University, where she first worked as a postdoctoral investigator and was an instructor from 1941 until 1950 when she moved to Emory University. [5] She taught biochemistry at Emory University from 1950 to 1967. During 195457 Russell worked on the committee of the United States National Research Council, then during 195864 at the National Science Foundation. She became a full professor at Emory University in 1965. [1]

Research

In 1936, Russell spent time working with the Nobel-prize winning couple Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori [2] researching the impact of epinephrine and insulin on metabolism. [6] [7] [8]

Pituitary gland research

Russell's major research indicated that fasting rats lose muscle glycogen following pituitary removal and injections of pituitary extract can prevent weight loss. She determined the relationship between the anterior pituitary and carbohydrates. [9] Her work allowed the further isolation and identification of growth hormones. [2]

Recognition

Russell was awarded the Kraft Prize, Phi Beta Kappa Key, Steward Scholarship, and University Gold Medal. In 1945 she received the CIBA award of the Endocrine Society. [10] She worked on the National Institutes of Health peer review committee, and was Vice President of the Endocrine Society. Russell was awarded the Upjohn Award of the Endocrine Society in 1961 [5] and elected a member of Sigma Xi. [2]

Personal life

Russell married Alfred Ellis Wilhelmi in 1940. She enjoyed gardening, sewing and origami. [11] Russell developed breast cancer in 1962, but worked to the end of her life. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endocrinology</span> Branch of medicine dealing the endocrine system

Endocrinology is a branch of biology and medicine dealing with the endocrine system, its diseases, and its specific secretions known as hormones. It is also concerned with the integration of developmental events proliferation, growth, and differentiation, and the psychological or behavioral activities of metabolism, growth and development, tissue function, sleep, digestion, respiration, excretion, mood, stress, lactation, movement, reproduction, and sensory perception caused by hormones. Specializations include behavioral endocrinology and comparative endocrinology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycogen</span> Glucose polymer used as energy store in animals

Glycogen is a multibranched polysaccharide of glucose that serves as a form of energy storage in animals, fungi, and bacteria. It is the main storage form of glucose in the human body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Ferdinand Cori</span> Czech Nobel prize laureate and scientist

Carl Ferdinand Cori, ForMemRS was a Czech-American biochemist and pharmacologist. He, together with his wife Gerty Cori and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, received a Nobel Prize in 1947 for their discovery of how the glucose derivative glycogen is broken down and resynthesized in the body for use as a store and source of energy. In 2004, both Coris were designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in recognition of their work that elucidated carbohydrate metabolism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerty Cori</span> Czech-American biochemist (1896–1957)

Gerty Theresa Cori was a Bohemian-Austrian and American biochemist who in 1947 was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for her role in the "discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardo Houssay</span> Argentine physician (1887–1971)

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was an Argentine physiologist. Houssay was a co-recipient of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the role played by pituitary hormones in regulating the amount of glucose in animals, sharing the prize with Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori. He is the first Latin American Nobel laureate in the sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anterior pituitary</span> Anterior lobe of the pituitary gland

The anterior pituitary is a major organ of the endocrine system. The anterior pituitary is the glandular, anterior lobe that together with the makes up the pituitary gland (hypophysis) which, in humans, is located at the base of the brain, protruding off the bottom of the hypothalamus.

Carbohydrate metabolism is the whole of the biochemical processes responsible for the metabolic formation, breakdown, and interconversion of carbohydrates in living organisms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr.</span> American pharmacologist and biochemist (1915–1974)

Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr. was an American pharmacologist and biochemist born in Burlingame, Kansas. Sutherland won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971 "for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones", especially epinephrine, via second messengers, namely cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cyclic AMP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cori cycle</span> Series of interconnected biochemical reactions

The Cori cycle, named after its discoverers, Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori, is a metabolic pathway in which lactate, produced by anaerobic glycolysis in muscles, is transported to the liver and converted to glucose, which then returns to the muscles and is cyclically metabolized back to lactate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycogen phosphorylase</span> Class of enzymes

Glycogen phosphorylase is one of the phosphorylase enzymes. Glycogen phosphorylase catalyzes the rate-limiting step in glycogenolysis in animals by releasing glucose-1-phosphate from the terminal alpha-1,4-glycosidic bond. Glycogen phosphorylase is also studied as a model protein regulated by both reversible phosphorylation and allosteric effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glucose 1-phosphate</span> Chemical compound

Glucose 1-phosphate is a glucose molecule with a phosphate group on the 1'-carbon. It can exist in either the α- or β-anomeric form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycogen storage disease type III</span> Medical condition

Glycogen storage disease type III (GSD III) is an autosomal recessive metabolic disorder and inborn error of metabolism (specifically of carbohydrates) characterized by a deficiency in glycogen debranching enzymes. It is also known as Cori's disease in honor of the 1947 Nobel laureates Carl Cori and Gerty Cori. Other names include Forbes disease in honor of clinician Gilbert Burnett Forbes (1915–2003), an American physician who further described the features of the disorder, or limit dextrinosis, due to the limit dextrin-like structures in cytosol. Limit dextrin is the remaining polymer produced after hydrolysis of glycogen. Without glycogen debranching enzymes to further convert these branched glycogen polymers to glucose, limit dextrinosis abnormally accumulates in the cytoplasm.

Fructolysis refers to the metabolism of fructose from dietary sources. Though the metabolism of glucose through glycolysis uses many of the same enzymes and intermediate structures as those in fructolysis, the two sugars have very different metabolic fates in human metabolism. Under one percent of ingested fructose is directly converted to plasma triglyceride. 29% - 54% of fructose is converted in liver to glucose, and about a quarter of fructose is converted to lactate. 15% - 18% is converted to glycogen. Glucose and lactate are then used normally as energy to fuel cells all over the body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sympathoadrenal system</span>

The sympathoadrenal system is a physiological connection between the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal medulla and is crucial in an organism's physiological response to outside stimuli. When the body receives sensory information, the sympathetic nervous system sends a signal to preganglionic nerve fibers, which activate the adrenal medulla through acetylcholine. Once activated, norepinephrine and epinephrine are released directly into the blood by adrenomedullary cells where they act as the bodily mechanism for "fight-or-flight" responses. Because of this, the sympathoadrenal system plays a large role in maintaining glucose levels, sodium levels, blood pressure, and various other metabolic pathways that couple with bodily responses to the environment. During numerous diseased states, such as hypoglycemia or even stress, the body's metabolic processes are skewed. The sympathoadrenal system works to return the body to homeostasis through the activation or inactivation of the adrenal gland. However, more severe disorders of the sympathoadrenal system such as pheochromocytoma can affect the body's ability to maintain a homeostatic state. In these cases, curative agents such as adrenergic agonists and antagonists are used to modify epinephrine and norepinephrine levels released by the adrenal medulla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Porter</span> British botanist (1899-1987)

Helen Kemp Porter was a British botanist from Imperial College London. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first female professor at Imperial College London. Her studies of polysaccharide metabolism in tobacco plants were groundbreaking; she was one of the first British scientists to use the innovative technologies of chromatography and radioactive tracers.

Arda Alden Green was an American biochemist who co-discovered the neurotransmitter serotonin and discovered the reaction responsible for firefly bioluminescence. She is also known for contributing to Gerty Cori and Carl Cori's elucidation of the Cori cycle and showing how pH affects hemoglobin's ability to bind and transport oxygen. She received the Garvan-Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society for her work.

Marion Sewer (1972-2016) was a pharmacologist and professor at the University of California, San Diego's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences known for her research on steroid hormone biogenesis and her commitment to increasing diversity in science. Much of her research centered around cytochrome P450, a family of enzymes involved in the conversion of cholesterol into steroid hormones. She died unexpectedly at the age of 43 from a pulmonary embolism on January 28, 2016, while traveling through the Detroit airport.

Barbara Illingworth Brown was an American biochemist. She worked primarily at Washington University in St. Louis.

Alfred Ellis Wilhelmi (1910–1994) was an American endocrinologist recognized for contributing to the understanding of anterior pituitary hormones.

Adriana G. Ioachimescu is a Romanian-American neuroendocrinologist and professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin in the Division of Endocrinology and Molecular Medicine and the Director for Pituitary and Adrenal Disease Program, where she joined in 2023. She was born in Bucharest, Romania. Her research focuses on pituitary disorders and developing therapies for conditions like Cushing’s syndrome.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Wayne, Tiffany K. (2010). American women of science since 1900. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. p. 973. ISBN   978-1598841589.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Grinstein, Louise S. (1997). Women in the biological sciences : a biobibliographic sourcebook . Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp.  451–54. ISBN   0313291802. Jane Anne Russell at Google Books
  3. 1 2 RUSSELL, JANE A. (1967). "IN MEMORIAM". Endocrinology. 81 (4): 689–692. doi:10.1210/endo-81-4-689. ISSN   0013-7227. PMID   5342826.
  4. "DR. JANE A. RUSSELL, EMORY PROFESSOR, 56". The New York Times. 1967-03-14. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-10-08.
  5. 1 2 "Jane Anne Russell (1911–1967), Ph.D. · Yale University Library Online Exhibitions". onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu. Retrieved 2021-10-08.
  6. Russell, Jane A.; Cori, Gerty T. (1937-04-30). "A Comparison of the Metabolic Effects of Subcutaneous and Intravenous Epinephrine Injections in Normal and Hypophysectomized Rats". American Journal of Physiology. Legacy Content. 119 (1): 167–174. doi:10.1152/ajplegacy.1937.119.1.167. ISSN   0002-9513.
  7. Pencharz, Richard I.; Cori, Carl F.; Russell, Jane A. (1936-10-01). "Relation of Anterior and Posterior Lobe of the Hypophysis to Insulin Sensitivity in the Rat". Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 35 (1): 32–35. doi:10.3181/00379727-35-8844C. ISSN   0037-9727. S2CID   83950997.
  8. Fisher, Robert E.; Russell, Jane A.; Cori, Carl F. (1936). "Glycogen Disappearance and Carbohydrate Oxidation in Hypophysectomized Rats". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 115 (3): 627–634. doi: 10.1016/s0021-9258(18)74701-7 . ISSN   0021-9258.
  9. Russell, J A (1945). "Carbohydrate Metabolism". Annual Review of Biochemistry. 14 (1): 309–332. doi:10.1146/annurev.bi.14.070145.001521. ISSN   0066-4154.
  10. "Association Notice". The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 5 (4): 192. 1945. doi:10.1210/jcem-5-4-192. ISSN   0021-972X.
  11. "Origami Sightings - Non-Fiction" . Retrieved 21 August 2013.