Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Developmental Biologist
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was born on October 20, 1942, during World War II. Her father, Rolf Volhard, was an architect, and both of her parents had a love for art which they passed onto Christiane. Arts was a frequent pastime for her, and she enjoyed playing the flute. However, Christiane was more interested in learning about and understanding plants and animals. She recalled constantly spending her time outside, collecting plants from gardens and participating in a bird-watching club. By the age of 12, after vacationing at a farm and extensively studying birds and animals, she was certain that she wanted to be a biologist, and she never really found interest in subjects that did not amaze her. However, even from a young age, her intellect and scientific mind could not have been doubted. Her teachers once wrote “she is gifted above average, has a critical and qualified judgement, and the talent for independent scientific work” (Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, 1995).
After completing her high school education, Christiane worked for a month as a nurse to see if she was interested in the study of medicine. She briefly considered this path because of its relevance to mankind but quickly discarded the idea after finishing her working experience. Christiane then went on to attend Frankfurt University to study biology but did not enjoy her experience as she found the courses in biology rather dull at the time and struggled with making new friends at the university. Her interest in other scientific streams increased after a series of physics lectures by her then Professor Martienssen. However, it was her chemistry classes that reignited the passion for science that had been inside of her all along. At the same time, a new biochemistry course, the first of its kind, had begun at the University of Tübingen, and it quickly caught Christiane’s eye, which led her to transfer there. What stood out to her most were the courses on microbiology and genetics. While she found them fascinating, she later admitted she did not understand most of what was covered in the lectures at the time. She went on to obtain her degree in biochemistry in 1969. Her Diploma laboratory work was carried out under the guidance of renowned scientist Heinz Schaller, who played a vital role in finding a vaccine for the hepatitis B virus only a few years later. She began her doctoral work in his laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research. Although she wanted to write her thesis on phage RNA-DNA interactions, there were not adequate resources available to her. Thus, she decided to develop a technique for purifying RNA polymerase, the molecule responsible for transcribing RNA to DNA. The technique involved capturing the molecule at the specific regions called promoters where it binds to DNA, characterizing these promoter regions and explaining the molecular mechanisms that triggered the transcription process. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard gained a name for herself through her work in molecular biology and was featured in many academic journals but quickly grew tired of the field. She later went on to admit that she enrolled in molecular biology because “at the time, it was the field that was really moving forwards and was fashionable” (Katherine Brown, 2017).
Christiane’s true passion laid in utilising the concepts of genetics in solving developmental problems. After reading a review about Drosophila (fruit flies) mutants, she instantly became interested in the bicaudal mutation, which is a mutation essentially referring to the mutation of an ovarian cell that can undergo meiosis to form an ovum. During a meeting in Freiburg in 1973 she approached Walter Gehring, the publisher of the article, and asked if she could join his laboratory at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Gehring agreed, so she moved to Switzerland in 1975, supported by a fellowship awarded to her by the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). There she commenced large-scale genetic screens of these mutant Drosophila embryos that lacked the bicaudal gene. Christiane later admitted that the bicaudal gene was the hardest one that she had ever had to work with. She had to constantly collect and harvest embryos, obtain a large enough number of mutants that were required for the screen, and identify the most miniscule changes in the outward appearance of the flies. Her work on this gene lasted for 2 years and culminated in her paper “Genetic analysis of pattern-formation in the embryo of Drosophila melanogaster.” Through her research, she briefly met Eric Wieschaus, the man she would go on to work with for her Nobel Prize-winning research. The two were in correspondence but had never worked together until they were contacted by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) to jointly lead a team of researchers that focussed solely on flies.
Christiane and Eric began working on a project to analyze embryonic Drosophila mutants and developed a screen to isolate new mutations in 1977. Initially she and Eric were at odds about which aspects of the reproductive system they wanted to focus on. She was fascinated by using maternal screens to understand the morphogens while Eric wanted to examine oogenesis and sex determination, and they did not have enough room in the laboratory for both experiments. However, they quickly adapted to their tiny laboratory and compromised on an aspect they both found interesting: large-scale zygotic screens. In the span of 3 years, they were able to publish a research paper on their findings called “Mutations Affecting Segment Number and Polarity in Drosophila.” It was this research that won the two as well as Ed Lewis, another pioneer in understanding Drosophila development, the 1995 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.
After publishing their paper, Eric accepted a job in the United States at Princeton University. Christiane felt uncomfortable continuing to work at EMBL without him, and she jumped at the opportunity to become a junior investigator at Friedrich Miescher Laboratory (FML). During her time there, she continued the research on genes her and Eric had touched upon in their 1980 paper. In 1985, she became the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology and held the post until 2014. In 1986, Christiane began working with fish in her research work, and by 1993, the laboratory she led published documents detailing 1,200 zebrafish mutants, proving that, similar to Drosophila, a large number of developmental mutants could be observed in a vertebrate species. She helped create the worldwide scientific trend of using zebrafish as a standard vertebrae research model because of numerous desirable features like their similarities with mammals, quick embryonic development, and large transparent embryos that were undoubtedly easier to work with than tiny fly embryos.
Leading up to her recognition by the Nobel Prize committee in 1995, she won a string of awards including the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award (New York, United States), the Prix Louis Jeantet de Médecine (Geneva, Switzerland), and the Ernst Schering Prize (Berlin, Germany). In 1994, she had the distinct honor of having a newly discovered asteroid in our solar system named after her. She has also received honorary doctorates from the following universities: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Rockefeller (United States), Utrecht (the Netherlands), University College London, Oxford and Sheffield (United Kingdom), Freiburg and Munich (Germany).
In the last decades, Christiane switched her focus to tackling social, ethical and philosophical issues. She was an essential member of the German National Ethics Council from 2001 to 2006 and in 2004, established a foundation under her name, which works to promote gender equality in science by providing support and resources to women scientists. Christiane has no children and believes that the struggle for women to handle both research and family obligations is a major reason why women are underrepresented in leading scientific positions.
by Raina Talwar Bhatia
References
Brown, K. (2017, November 1). An interview with Christiane nüsslein-volhard. Development. https://dev.biologists.org/content/144/21/3851
DNA Learning Center. (2018). Christiane nusslein-volhard :: DNA from the beginning. DNA from the Beginning — An animated primer of 75 experiments that made modern genetics. https://www.dnaftb.org/37/bio-2.html
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. (2020). Nüsslein-volhard, Christiane. Startseite — Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. https://www.mpg.de/459869/entwicklungsbiologie_wissM2
Resnik, J., & May, C. (2012, February 16). Christiane nusslein-volhard (1942-). The Embryo Project Encyclopedia | Recording and contextualizing the science of embryos, development, and reproduction. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/christiane-nusslein-volhard-1942
Schaller, H. (2019). Heinz Schaller — Publications. The Academic Family Tree. https://academictree.org/chemistry/publications.php?pid=72549
Volhard, C. N. (1995). The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine 1995. NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1995/nusslein-volhard/biographical/
