Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard: Die Streifen des Zebrafisches: Wozu und wie entsteht Schönheit bei Tieren?

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard is a German developmental biologist and geneticist. She was the first German woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for the discovery concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development. She shares the prize with her colleague Eric F. Wieschaus and the US-American geneticist Edward B. Lewis. In 1980, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus succeeded in identifying and classifying 15 genes in the egg of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) that direct the cells to form a new fly. They furthermore found out that these genes are activated by signal substances. For the fly, Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus identified four such substances acting in a predetermined order and concentration. In the course of their research, it became obvious that the fly embryo is in many ways representative for embryos of other animals or even of humans.  In her later work, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard preferred the zebrafish as object of study.