Detlef Weigel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Detlef Weigel
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Weigel in 2016
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| Born | December 15, 1961 Dannenberg (Elbe), Germany
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| Nationality | German and US (naturalized) |
| Alma mater | Bielefeld University, University of Cologne |
| Awards | McClintock Prize (2019) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2007) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biology |
| Institutions | Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology University of Tübingen Salk Institute |
| Doctoral advisor | Herbert Jäckle |
Detlef Weigel, born in 1961 in Lower Saxony, Germany, is a German American scientist. He studies how living things grow and change over time. His work combines two big areas: how organisms develop and how they evolve.
Contents
Education and Early Discoveries
Detlef Weigel studied biology and chemistry at the universities of Bielefeld and Cologne. In 1986, he earned his diploma in biology. His research focused on how nerve cells develop in fruit flies, called Drosophila.
In 1988, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen. During his PhD studies, he made an important discovery. He found the first member of a key group of proteins called Forkhead/FOX proteins. These proteins help control which genes are turned on or off in cells. He received his PhD from the University of Tübingen in 1988 with top honors.
Career and Plant Research
After his PhD, Weigel started working with plants at Caltech. There, he helped find the LEAFY gene, which is important for flower development in a plant called Arabidopsis thaliana.
From 1993 to 2002, he worked as a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. In 2002, he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. He started a new department there focused on Molecular Biology. He also teaches at the Salk Institute and the University of Tübingen. In 2012, he helped start a company called Computomics that uses computer science to study plants. He is also a main editor for the science journal eLife.
Discoveries in Plant Development
In the 1990s, Weigel's team studied how individual flowers grow. They also looked at what makes plants start to flower. They made big discoveries in both areas.
One important finding was with Ove Nilsson. They showed that adding the LEAFY gene from Arabidopsis thaliana to aspen trees could make the trees flower much faster. Instead of waiting years, the trees flowered in just months. Weigel's team also found the FT gene. This gene was later found to be a key part of the signal that tells a plant it's time to flower. His group also developed new tools to study genes. These tools helped them find the first microRNA mutant in plants. MicroRNAs are tiny molecules that help control gene activity.
Understanding Plant Evolution
Studying how plants decide when to flower led Weigel to broader questions about evolution. His group explores how plants change their development based on their environment. They are also known for creating huge collections of genetic information. For example, they made the first detailed genetic map for a non-mammal species.
To learn even more about genetic differences, Weigel and his colleagues started the 1001 Genomes project for Arabidopsis thaliana. This project aims to study the genes of many different Arabidopsis plants.
A newer area of his research looks at "genetic barriers." These are things that can stop different types of plants from successfully mixing their genes. Working with Jeffery Dangl, his team found that these barriers in plants are often linked to problems with their immune system. They discovered that in some hybrid plants (offspring from two different parents), certain genes from one parent might be seen as harmful by the other parent's immune system. This can cause cells to die throughout the plant. Many of the genes involved are part of the plant's immune system. This shows that there are limits to how different immune systems can work together. They have studied several cases in detail and found that these problems happen because specific proteins from the parents don't interact well.
Awards and Recognition
Detlef Weigel has received many honors for his scientific work:
- 1989 Dieter Rampacher Award of the Max Planck Society
- 1994 Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation
- 2001 Charles Albert Shull Award of the American Society of Plant Biologists
- 2003 Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO)
- 2007 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- 2008 Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
- 2009 Member of the US National Academy of Sciences
- 2010 Otto Bayer Award of the Bayer Foundations
- 2010 Foreign Member of the Royal Society
- 2011 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 2011 State Research Prize of Baden-Württemberg
- 2015 Mendel Medal of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
- 2016 Genetics Society of America Medal
- 2019 McClintock Prize
- 2019 Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 2020 Novozymes Prize of the Novo Nordisk Foundation
