Betty Mack Twarog (August 28, 1927 – February 6, 2013) was an American biochemist who was the first to find serotonin in mammalian brain.
Betty Twarog | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 28, 1927 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | February 6, 2013 (aged 85) Damariscotta, Maine, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College Tufts University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
Life and career
Betty M Twarog was born on August 28, 1927, in New York City.[1] She attended Swarthmore College from 1944 to 1948, focusing on mathematics. While studying for an M.Sc. at Tufts College she heard a lecture on mollusc muscle neurology and in 1949 enrolled under John Welsh in the PhD program at Harvard to study this area.[2] By 1952 she had submitted a paper showing that serotonin had a role as a neurotransmitter in mussels. [3] In autumn 1952 Twarog moved for family reasons to the Kent State University area, and chose the Cleveland Clinic as a place to continue her study of her hypothesis that invertebrate neurotransmitters would also be found in mammals.[2] Although her supporter there, Irvine Page did not believe serotonin would be found in the brain, he nevertheless gave Twarog a laboratory and technician. By June 1953 a paper was submitted announcing the isolation of serotonin in mammalian brain. [4]
Twarog left the Cleveland Clinic in 1954 and continued to work on invertebrate smooth muscle at Tufts, Harvard and SUNY at Stony Brook.[2] In later years, at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, she worked on how shellfish evade phytoplankton poisons.[2]
Twarog died on February 6, 2013, at the age of 85 in Damariscotta, Maine.[5]
Impact in science and medicine
Twarog's isolation of serotonin in brain established its potential as a neurotransmitter and thus a modulator of brain action. Her discovery was an essential precursor to the creation in 1978 of the antidepressant SSRI medicines such as fluoxetine and sertraline.
References
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