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Eric F. Wieschaus (born June 8, 1947) is an
American developmental biologist and Nobel Prize-winner.
Born in
South Bend, Indiana, he attended
John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham, AL before attending the
University of Notre Dame for his undergraduate studies (B.S., biology), and
Yale University (Ph.D., biology) for his graduate work. In 1978, he moved to his first independent job, at the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory in
Heidelberg,
Germany and moved from Heidelberg to
Princeton University in the
United States in
1981.
Much of his research has focused on
embryogenesis in the fruit fly
Drosophila melanogaster, specifically in the patterning that occurs in the early
Drosophila embryo. Most of the gene products used by the embryo at these stages are already present in the unfertilized egg and were produced by maternal transcription during
oogenesis. A small number of gene products, however, are supplied by transcription in the embryo itself. He has focused on these
"zygotically" active genes because he believes the temporal and spatial pattern of their transcription may provide the triggers controlling the normal sequence of embryonic development.
Saturation of all the possible mutations on each chromosome by random events to test embryonic lethality was done by Eric Wieschaus.(PSY IITK)
In
1995, he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with
Edward B. Lewis and
Christiane......
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