Everything about Walter Fiers totally explained
Walter Fiers (b.
Ieper,
Belgium,
1931) is a
Belgian molecular biologist.
He obtained a degree of Engineer for Chemistry and Agricultural Industries at the
University of Ghent in
1954, and started his research career as an
enzymologist in the laboratory of
Laurent Vandendriessche in Ghent. In 1956-57, he worked with
Heinz Holter in
Copenhagen (
Denmark). In 1960, he obtained a fellowship from the
Rockefeller Foundation and joined the group of
Bob Sinsheimer as a postdoc. At the
California Institute of Technology Walter Fiers was exposed to
Molecular Biology, which was then just developing, studying viral
DNA. He demonstrated the physical, covalently closed circularity of
Bacteriophage PhiX-174 DNA. In
1962, Fiers moved to
Madison,
Wisconsin, to work in the laboratory of future
Nobel laureate,
Gobind Khorana.
At the end of
1962, Fiers returned to Belgium and set up the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Ghent. His research involved Bacteriophage MS2; he was the first to establish the complete nucleotide sequence of a gene (
1972) and of a viral genome (
bacteriophage MS2)(1976). In
1978 Fiers and his team were the first to reveal the complete nucleotide-sequence of
SV40. The development of totally new procedures and knowledge led to the ability to clone almost any gene and to express these efficiently in bacteria or in other
heterologous hosts.
In
1997 Fiers retired and became Professor Emeritus, and the following year he retired from his position as director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Together with
Xavier Saelens and their team, he continued his research, to find a universal
influenza vaccine, based on the
M2 protein on the surface of the influenza A virus. The ectodomain of the M2 protein remains unchanged in all human influenza viruses known, including the strains that caused the
pandemics in the last century, which makes it eligible for a universal influenza A vaccine
.
Awards
Further Information
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