14 Irene (Ayako) Uchida

Irene (Ayako) Uchida was born to first-generation Japanese immigrants and lived in Vancouver, BC. She developed a passion to help others after her best friend passed away in a car crash and her sister to tuberculosis. She finished her second year in English at UBC before leaving to visit Japan (Dickson and Bergeron, 2020). However, she eventually went back to Canada due to the food shortage and rationing from the upcoming Second World War (Davidson, 2013).

Her family, among 22,000 other Japanese Canadians, were put into Internment Camps after arrival in Canada and her family was split up. Despite being separated from her family, the harsh living conditions and extreme racism, she opened a school at the Lemon Creek Camp, eventually taking on the role of principal and teacher (Davidson, 2013). Her love for teaching youth really shined through.

After the war, Irene was able to attend university again, this time at the University of Toronto. In 1946, she completed her bachelor’s and planned to do her master’s degree until she attended Dr. Norma Ford Walker’s Zoology class and fell in love with genetics and was interested in how certain diseases were inherited. She eventually pursued a PhD in Zoology and began working at the Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children where she researched genetic disorders twins (Asian Heritage Month, 2021).

Irene’s contribution to STEM was the “development of Canada’s first diagnostic blood test to karyotype the chromosomes of infants” (Dickson and Bergeron, 2020), ultimately leading to the creation of Canada’s largest registry for twins. Her work involved studying genetic disorders in twins with heart disease and how certain diseases were inherited.

She also found the linkage between X-Ray radiation and pregnant woman, and the occurrence of trisomy (the term for having an extra chromosome) in their children (Davidson, 2013). She hypothesized that pregnant woman who were exposed to x-ray radiation were at higher risk for children with down syndrome compared to those who were not exposed to any x-ray radiation. After conducting this experiment with 972 children in each category (children conceived from mothers who had x-rays and children conceived from mothers who did not), the results supported her hypothesis as a high number of children with trisomy. This led to the emergence of Canada’s first cytogenetics program, the field of biology that studies how chromosomes are inherited.

Irene won many awards in her lifetime; the most notable was when she was made Officer of the Order of Canada, the second highest honor in Canada (Davidson, 2013). Irene is truly an inspiration to many in STEM, especially for someone like myself who also identifies as a woman and is a person of colour.

Irene’s research on genetic disorders in twins with heart disease and the occurrence of trisomy in pregnant woman exposed to x-ray radiation, are closely related to the BC Science 10 curriculum: Mechanisms for Diversity of Life (the biology unit). Her work emphasizes DNA structure and function, and most importantly, patterns of inheritance such as human genetics and mutations. Additionally, her research in trisomy is related to one of the key topics that Science 10 students would learn in the biology unit, which is the interactions of genes and the environment as her research compared two different groups: children whose mothers were exposed to x-ray radiation prior to labor, and children whose mothers were not exposed to x-ray radiation prior to labor.

Curricular competencies that would support Irene’s ideas and research would be:

Questioning and Predicting:

• Irene demonstrated a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem that was of personal interest to her. Her interest in how certain diseases is inherited led to her research in understanding heart diseases in twins and the linkage between trisomy in children and pregnant women.

Applying and Innovating:

• Irene’s research helped contribute to finding solutions to problems at both a local and global level through inquiry. Her curiosity led her to achieve and pioneer cytogenetics in Canada and the creation of Canada’s largest registry for twins.