Eric F. Wieschaus

Facts

Eric F. Wieschaus

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Eric F. Wieschaus
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1995

Born: 8 June 1947, South Bend, IN, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

Among more advanced organisms, life begins when a fertilized egg divides and forms new cells which, in turn, also divide. Initially these cells appear identical, but in time, they begin to change. Some cells go to make up the heart, others nerve paths, and still others strands of hair, for example. Genes regulate this process. Eric Wieschaus and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard studied the development of fruit flies and, around 1980, succeeded in identifying and classifying the 15 genes that direct the cells to form a new fly.

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