Visualizing data with professor Tsugita: a history within distinct macromolecular classes Visualizando datos con el profesor Tsugita: una historia dentro de distintas clases macromoleculares Visualiser des données avec le professeur Tsugita: une histoire au sein de classes macromoléculaires distinctes En Es Fr

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Following the emphasis on Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) to encourage further studies of the successive model systems and modes of experimentation that shaped the growth of molecular biology, this study searches to establish the standing of Akira Tsugita in the history of bioscience research. The analysis aims to provide an explanation for the spread of the main mechanism that he proposed for the visualization of biological information. In the mid twentieth century, to harness the information content of the coding problem of how is determined the order of nucleotides in ribo- or deoxy- ribonucleic acid, as a UC Berkeley virolo-gist Tsugita denied its mathematical nature and gave an answer of biological sig-nificance. Together with Fraenkel-Conrat, and in line with Sanger's experiment on insulin, Tsugita determined the number of nucleotides per amino acid in the tobacco mosaic virus DNA, noting three amino acid differences. A triplet code was assumed. As a result Marshall W. Nirenberg coined the term 'codon', in a work also deserving credit to Tsugita and Fraenkel-Conrat.Upon returning to Japan in 1961, Tsugita researched a framework for visualiz-ing mutations in cancer and he established a cooperation with Masayori Inouye (then a Postdoc at Osaka University) and George Streisinger, who begins work-ing with the zebrafish in the late 1960's. By 1966, their studies of mutants and re-combination defined the mechanism of frameshift mutations and the structure of the T4 phage genome. In a Cold Spring Harbor contribution dedicated to Theo-dosius Dobzhansky, Tsugita confirmed both the nature of frameshift mutations and the assignment of amino acids to triplets of nucleotides; also the first DNA sequence of a specific gene ever determined was theirs, albeit a partial sequence, 11 years before the Sanger's DNA sequence. Tsugita suggested the mechanism of translation of multiple open reading frames on a single viral genomic RNA, and moved to Europe, as a visiting Lecturer on leave of absence from the Osaka University at the University of Basel (1972-78) at first, and then as part of the staff of the European Molecular Biology Laborato-ry in Heidelberg (1978-1985), to establish and promote standards in DNA se-quencing. From the mid-sixties, he had established a correspondence with Syd-ney Brenner in Cambridge (UK) and, in line with his programmatic vision, once back in Japan in 1985, this time at Tokyo University, Tsugita's main interests be-came directly involved in a bioinformatics program. In the decades since 1990, assuming various top positions within the International Council of Science (ICSU), the late Tsugita afforded with the cross-disciplinary challenges of visual-izing data within genomics, proteomics and glycomics, as the only way to keep pace with the increasing data production among sequence databanks.