Theodore Puck
Theodore Thomas Puck, Ted Puck, (* September 24, 1916 in Chicago, † November 6, 2005 in Denver ) was an American geneticist and biophysicist.
Life
Theodore Puck studied physical chemistry at the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1940 his postgraduate studies with Nobel laureate James Franck with a Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph.D.). During the Second World War he worked in Chicago for the Commission on Airborne Infections of the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army in the laboratory of O. H. Robertson to the spread of bacterial and viral infections. After the war he worked as a post- graduate student for one year at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech ) in the laboratory of Max Delbrück, where he studied the initial steps of the invasion of bacteriophages. In 1948 Puck as a director and professor at the newly established Department of Biophysics at the University of Colorado Denver, where he remained all his life. In 1962 he founded the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute for Cancer Research in Denver, which he directed until 1995.
Puck was married to Mary Hill and father of three daughters. He died on 6 November 2005 at the consequences of a fall.
Work
In Denver sat puck to 1954 for the time being started in Delbrück studies on invasion of bacteriophages continued before the culture of mammalian cells and the genetics of somatic cells turned to.
Puck, Theodore and colleagues established a technique which allowed a relatively effective cultivation of individual mammalian cells. A monolayer of irradiated, non- divisible feeder cells in close proximity of individual to be cloned HeLa cells was used to prepare a medium with the necessary growth factors.
In 1956 he showed that a much lower dose of X-rays to destroy mammalian cells is necessary, as was previously assumed. Puck and co-workers isolated for the first time in 1957 CHO cells, an immortalized cell line derived from the ovary of the Chinese hamster. In a comprehensive study puck and Joe Hin Tjio showed that human cells have 46 chromosomes and identified the chromosome pairs. The number of 46 chromosomes had Tjio published in 1956 with Albert Levan, but for relatively few cells were analyzed. This work led in 1960 to the Denver classification. Pucks working group also did pioneering work in the development of CO2 - incubators for culturing animal cells. In 1967 he exhibited together with Fa -Ten Kao present a method for the isolation of deficient mutants ( auxotrophic mutants) from the CHO -K1 strain after incubation with 5 - bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU ). Further work is devoted to the effects of different mutagens, genome and chromosome mutations and chromosome mapping.
Awards (selection)
Puck was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences and in 1967 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of his scientific achievements of 1960.
Writings (selection )
A more detailed bibliography of selected scriptures found in Patterson, 2009.
- TT Puck: A Rapid Method for Viable Cell Titration and Clone Production with HeLa Cells in Tissue Culture: The Use of X - Irradiated Cells to Supply Conditioning Factors. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 41, 1955, pp. 432-437, doi: 10.1073/pnas.41.7.432. PMID 16589695, PMC 528 114 (Free full text ).
- G. Sato, HW Fisher, TT Puck: Molecular Growth Requirements of Single Mammalian Cells. In: Science. 126, 1957, pp. 961-964, doi: 10.1126/science.126.3280.961. PMID 17,811,344th
- TT Puck: The Mammalian Cell as a Microorganism: Genetic and Biochemical Studies in Vitro. Holden -Day, San Francisco, 1972, ISBN 0-8162-6980-7.
- T. T. Puck: Living history biography. In: American journal of medical genetics. Volume 53, Number 3, November 1994, pp. 274-284, ISSN 0148-7299. doi: 10.1002/ajmg.1320530313. PMID 7,856,664th