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The 2009 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: Werner Arber, Physiology or Medicine 1978

2010; MyJOVE; Issue: 37 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3791/1571

1940-087X

Werner Arber,

Bacteriophages and microbial interactions

Swiss microbial geneticist, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans for their discovery of restriction endonucleases.Werner Arber was born in Granichen, Switzerland in 1929.Following a public school education, he entered the Swiss Polytechnical School in Zurich in 1949, working toward a diploma in natural sciences.There, his first research experience involved isolating and characterizing an isomer of chlorine.Following graduation in 1953, Arber joined a graduate program at the University of Geneva, taking on an assistanceship in electron microscopy (EM), in which he studied gene transfer in the bacterial virus (bacteriophage) lambda.Eventually encountering limitations with EM as a tool, he began using microbial genetics as a methodology for his studies.The study of microbial genetics had been possible for a relatively short time: DNA had been discovered to carry genetic information only a decade before he d entered the field.