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Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus at EMBL.
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1948 Thanksgiving dinner at the Wieschaus'. Eric Wieschaus is sitting in the chair watching his father baste the turkey.
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Eric Wieschaus, five years old.
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Eric Wieschaus and Christiane Nusslein-Voldhard in their shared office at EMBL.
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Eric Wieschaus accepting his Nobel Prize from the King of Sweden, 1995.
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Edward Lewis, 1951.
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Scanning electron micrograph of the head a normal Drosophila.
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Scanning electron micrograph of the head a Drosophila mutant for the antennapedia gene. The mutation transforms antenna to legs.
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Drosophila embryo showing the expression of hairy (yellow), a pair rule gene.
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A cuticular preparation of a wild-type Drosophila embryo highlighting the segments and body structure.
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A cuticular preparation of a null bicoid mutant. There is a mirror-image formation of the posterior end.
Video Interviews
Eric Wieschaus is a Professor at Princeton University. He shared in the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on Drosophila development.
Clip 1 (0:59)
Wieschaus' first "personal" encounter with a fruit fly.
Clip 2 (1:24)
Wieschaus' first meeting with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and their early working relationship.
Clip 3 (0:42)
Generating the mutant fruit flies used in their experiments.
Clip 4 (1:06)
The results of the large-scale mutagenesis -- how many mutants and how many flies.
Clip 5 (0:59)
The "magic" number -- how many genes does a fly need for early embryonic development?
Clip 6 (1:30)
Wieschaus' comments on his friend and collaborator Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.
Eric Wieschaus and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard isolated and characterized many of the genes necessary for early embryonic development in Drosophila. Ed Lewis characterized one of the first homeotic mutations. ERIC FRANCIS WIESCHAUS (1947-)
Eric Wieschaus was born in South Bend, Indiana in 1947. His family moved to Birmingham, Alabama when he was six. He grew up without any special interest in science. He spent his free time painting and sketching; his ambition was to become an artist. This all changed when he participated in a summer program funded by the National Science Foundation. The program brought bright teens together and encouraged them to consider careers in science by sponsoring their internship in science laboratories. Wieschaus enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow students, and was given a chance to work in a neurobiology lab. He didn't believe that what he did in the lab produced much data, but he was so interested in the "scientific" process and interacting with other science "geeks" that he decided to study science in college. Wieschaus went to Notre Dame and majored in biology. As a way to earn money, he took a job making fly food in Harvey Bender's Drosophila lab. Here he learned the basics about fruit flies, but he was much more interested in embryology, and questions like: "how do cells know what to do as an embryo develops?", "what drives differentiation and development?" Wieschaus thought he might not have a chance to find out because just as he was finishing college, the Vietnam War started. He applied for conscientious objector status, and decided to go to graduate school at Yale University while he waited to see if he would be drafted. Harvey Bender intervened on his behalf and wrote to Donald Poulson, a Drosophila geneticist at Yale. Poulson took Wieschaus on as a grad student sight unseen. It was a stroke of luck to be in Poulson's lab because Poulson did a lot of the work on Drosophila embryogenesis. Poulson was about to retire, so Wieschaus wasted no time to learn as much as he could from him. After about a year, Poulson sent Wieschaus to Walter Gehring, who was just starting a fly lab at Yale. Poulson was able to retire and Wieschaus found himself in the enviable position of being the only graduate student in a new lab. He and Gehring worked closely together and Wieschaus finished his Ph.D. in 1974. By this time, he was in Basel, Switzerland where Gehring's lab had moved, and Wieschaus planned to go to Zurich, Switzerland, to do post-doctoral work. Before he left, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard came to Basel and the two of them began talking about possible experiments. In 1978, Wieschaus was offered a job at the newly established European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. Nüsslein-Volhard had been offered a job there as well, and the two of them were able to collaborate on the experiments they had talked about in Basel. They carried out large-scale mutagenesis experiments to find developmental Drosophila mutants. The result of their work was a new understanding of the mechanism involved in early Drosophila development. Wieschaus and Nüsslein-Volhard shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for their work with Ed Lewis. In 1981, Wieschaus accepted a position at Princeton University and he has been there ever since. His research continues to focus on development, specifically on changes in cell shape during the various developmental stages. Wieschaus believes that his early passion for art enhanced his ability as a scientist especially when it comes to "seeing" things. He still paints and does much of the image editing and presentation work of data from his lab. Wieschaus also does all the food preparation for his family, and spends his commuting time - he usually bikes to work - planning nutritious and practical meals. CHRISTIANE NÜSSLEIN-VOLHARD (1942-)
Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard was born in Frankfurt, Germany during World War II. Her father was an architect, and both parents were artistic in that they both painted and were musicians. Although the arts were a frequent pasttime, and Nüsslein-Volhard learned to play the flute, she was more interested in plants and animals. By age twelve, Nüsslein-Volhard knew that she wanted to be a biologist. Nüsslein-Volhard was considered by her high school teachers to be a gifted but lazy student. She worked hard only on the subjects that interested her. At the end of high school, Nüsslein-Volhard worked for a month as a nurse just to make sure that she wouldn't be more interested in a career in medicine. She wasn't and went to Frankfurt University to study biology. Nüsslein-Volhard found the biology courses rather dull, and when she found out the University of Tübingen would be offering a biochemistry program - the first of its kind in Germany at the time - Nüsslein-Volhard quickly decided to transfer. She finished her degree in 1969 and did graduate work determining promoter regions in phage. When she finished her Ph.D. in 1974, she wanted a new challenge and began to investigate the idea of using genetics to study developmental problems. She read a review about some Drosophila mutants and became interested in the bicaudal mutation. At a meeting in Freiburg in 1973, Nüsslein-Volhard approached Walter Gehring and asked if she could do post-doctoral work on bicaudal in his lab. He agreed and she moved to Basel in 1975. Nüsslein-Volhard found Drosophila fascinating; she learned to screen for mutants and developed techniques to analyze the mutations. She also met Eric Wieschaus who was finishing his Ph.D. thesis in Gehring's lab. After two years in Gehring's lab, Nüsslein-Volhard moved back to Freiburg to work with Klaus Sander who was an insect embryologist, and was the first to describe gradients in the insect egg. Sander's experiments influenced Nüsslein-Volhard's thinking, especially on some of the Drosophila mutants she was working on like bicaudal and dorsal. In 1978, Nüsslein-Volhard accepted a job at the new European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. Eric Wieschaus was hired at the same time. The two began working together to analyze embryonic Drosophila mutants and developed a screen to isolate new mutations. Within three years, Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus' labs managed to isolate enough mutants and work out the major events in embryonic Drosophila development. They published their results in a landmark paper in Nature in 1980. Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus shared the 1995 Nobel Prize with Ed Lewis for their work in Drosophila development. In 1981, Nüsslein-Volhard moved to the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen where she had a junior investigator. She continued to work on Drosophila, screening for and isolating new maternal mutations that affected development. Her lab also began working on the molecular biology aspects of the mutations. In 1985, Nüsslein-Volhard was appointed Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Entwicklungsbiologie (Developmental Biology) in Tübingen, a position she still holds now. Nüsslein-Volhard's lab currently works with Drosophila, and also uses zebrafish as a model to study vertebrate development - an interest Nüsslein-Volhard developed in the mid '80s. Nüsslein-Volhard is said to be an excellent cook, and often brought in meals to feed members of the lab. She also likes gardening and listening to music. EDWARD LEWIS (1918-2004)
Ed Lewis was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He became interested in biology while still in high school. He studied biostatistics at the University of Minnesota and received his B.A. in 1939. After his doctorate degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1942, Lewis joined the United States Army Air Force. He served from 1942-45 as a meteorologist and oceanographer in the Pacific Theater, rising to the rank of Captain. He returned to Caltech in 1946 as an instructor and has been a faculty member until his retirement in 1988. Most of his research on fruit flies was done at Caltech. Fruit flies were easy to work with and bred quickly. It was an ideal choice for studying genes involved in development. His work on homeotic genes earned him the 1995 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, which he shared with Eric Wieschaus and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Lewis has also won other awards for his work including the 1987 Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 1990 National Medal of Science, and the 1991 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Genetics Society of America, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lewis played the flute and was a member of the University of Minnesota's orchestra when he was an undergraduate. | |
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LinksFly BaseThe web site to go to for scientists working on or looking for genetic information about Drosophila melanogaster. The genomic sequence of D. melanogaster is available, as are pictures and descriptions of fly mutations. Fly Morph-o-GenesisCheck out these movies of early fruit fly embryonic development put together using scanning electron micrographs. Movies need the Quick Time plug-in to play. Interactive FlyA cyberspace guide to Drosophila genes and their roles in development Bibliography
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