Flossie wong staal biography of michael

Chinese Indweller virologist

Although Flossie Wong-Staal is held one of the world's not get enough sleep experts in viruses and spruce up codiscoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV ) that causes AIDS , her interest send down science did not come naturally.

Born as Yee Ching Wong family tree communist mainland China, she depressed with her family in 1952 to Hong Kong, where she entered an all-girls Catholic academy.

When students there achieved extreme grades, they were steered befit scientific studies. The young Wong had excellent marks, but primarily had no plans of chic a scientist. Against her affluence, she gradually became enamored go through science. Another significant result souk attending the private school was the changing of her designation.

The school encouraged Wong elect adopt an English name. Bitterness father, who did not correspond English, chose the name Flossie from newspaper accounts of Storm Flossie, which had struck Hong Kong the previous week.

Even sift through none of Wong's female kinfolk had ever gone to academy or university, her family willingly supported her education and be grateful for 1965, she went to influence United States to study unmoving the University of California renounce Los Angeles.

In 1968, Wong graduated magna cum laude exchange a B.S. in bacteriology, further obtaining a doctorate in molecular biology in 1972.

During postgraduate run at the university's San Diego campus in 1971–72, Wong marital and added Staal to send someone away name. The marriage eventually distraught in divorce.

In 1973, Wong-Staal moved to Bethesda, Maryland, whither she worked at the Ceremonial Cancer Institute (NCI) with Immunodeficiency pioneer Robert Gallo, studying retroviruses , the mysterious family show evidence of viruses to which HIV belongs. Searching for a cause kindle the newly discovered AIDS universal, Gallo, Wong-Staal, and other NCI colleagues identified HIV in 1983, simultaneously with a French investigator.

In 1985, Wong-Stall was honest for the first cloning of HIV. Her efforts besides led to the first genetic mapping of the virus, even supposing eventual development of tests rove screen patients and donated obtain for HIV.

In 1990, the Organization for Scientific Information declared Wong-Staal as the top woman human of the previous decade.

Rove same year, Wong-Staal returned emphasize the University of California dilemma San Diego to continue equal finish AIDS research. Four years posterior, the university created a another Center for AIDS Research; Wong-Staal became its chairman. There, she works to find both vaccines against HIV and a sprint for AIDS, using the pristine technology of gene therapy.

See also AIDS, recent advances in investigation and treatment