X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Walter Jakob Gehring


Homeotic selector gene

The independent discoveries of the homeobox in the 1983 by Walter Gehring's laboratory at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Thomas Kaufman's laboratory at Indiana University confirmed Lewis's theory.

Walter Jakob Gehring

In 1983 Gehring and his collaborators (William McGinnis, Michael S. Levine, Ernst Hafen, Richard Garber, Atsushi Kuroiwa, Johannes Wirz), discovered the homeobox, a DNA segment characteristic for homeotic genes which is not only present in arthropods and their ancestors, but also in vertebrates including man.

Walter Jakob Gehring (born 20 March 1939 in Zurich) is Professor at the Biozentrum Basel of the University of Basel, Switzerland.

He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich in 1965 and after two years as a research assistant of Professor Ernst Hadorn he joined Professor Alan Garen's group at Yale University in New Haven as a postdoctoral fellow.



see also