The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1995
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The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1995 to Edward B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus for their discoveries concerning “the genetic control of early embryonic development”.
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From Egg to Adult Fly
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The adult fly consists of head, 3 thoracic segments, 8 or 9 abdominal segments and tail. The individual segments develop differently during embryogenesis – but how is this done? Which genes control these events? How many are they? Do they cooperate or are they working independently of each other? |
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How Early Embryos are Formed
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| Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric F.Wieschaus identified and classified 15 genes of key importance in determining the body plan and the formation of body segments of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. |  |
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Edward B.Lewis studied the next step – homeotic genes that govern the development of a larval segment into a specific body segment. Homeotic means that something has been changed into the likeness of something else. Lewis found a co-linearity in time and space between the order of the genes in the bithorax complex and their effect regions in the segments. | |
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