Abstract:Dr. and Professor Wu Suxuan did an experiment that the bulb-scales of garlic(Allium sativum L.) after their domancies were fixed, sectioned and stained by Feulgen reaction and briliant green dye, and observed under light microscope. She found that the cell neclei released into cytoplasm the substance like nucleoli with acidic property which could be gathered near nuclei and stained first as blue colour, then, gradually changed into red colour with alkaline in the diferent cells, resulting in forming new nuclei. Simutaniously, the old cell nuclei disappeased. This phenomenon is called cell nucleus renewal. She proposed the hypothesis that (1) the substance released from the nuclei contains RNA stained first as blue colour and, then, the RNA could be transferred into DNA through a mechanism in the cells. (2) the cell nucleus renewal would be relative to cell physiology, such as substance transfer among the cells etc.
This scientific inference could not be recognized and further confirmed at that time. With the development of molecular biology,a part of the infrence "RNA-DNA" has been already confirmed by reverse transcriptase mechanism since in 1970 from the experiments by using viruses [5,6] and in 1981 from the evidences that there are a lot of retrotransposons containing reverse transcriptase genes in eukaryotic cells[8-13], and telomerase which functions like reverse transcriptase[14]. Certainly, the inference proposed by Wu Suxuan in 1956 has its great significance in science.
Dr. and Professor Wu Suxuan, who got her Ph.D degree in University of Michigan, USA in 1940‘s, was a known plant cytologist in China. She was a member of the Third National people‘s Congress, PRC and a member of the Fifth Chinese People‘s Political Cousultive Conference, PRC. She passed away forever in 1979. The day of pril 16 this year is 20 anniversary after she died. This paper is to show our commemoration for her contributions to science.