Günter Feix

Günter Feix (born October 28, 1934 in Bochum ) is a German biologist .

Günther Feix studied chemistry at the University of Freiburg . After his diploma thesis, he dealt in his dissertation with the synthesis of dehydroquinolizinium salts and received his doctorate with Otto Westphal in 1963 . He then worked in Severo Ochoa’s laboratory in New York with Charles Weissmann on questions of RNA phage replication.

In 1968 he returned to Carsten Bresch's chair at the University of Freiburg, where he worked on in-vitro synthesis of nucleic acids in E. coli and phage-infected cells and completed his habilitation in 1969 . In 1975 he became professor at the Biological Institute at the University of Freiburg, where he retired in 1999.

His main areas of research were and are molecular genetics and applied plant genetics . In these areas he has researched, among other things, viruses, storage proteins and development genetics of the roots of maize . In addition, he has dealt with the diversity and function of the microorganisms in the rhizosphere and has received international recognition for his research results. Last but not least, Feix has made significant contributions to the subject of genetic engineering and sustainable agriculture.

Publications (selection)

• together with Otto Westphal: On the synthesis of the dehydroquinolizinium system . Angewandte Chemie 75, 206 (1963).
• together with Morton Schneider, Charles Weissmann and Severo Ochoa: Synthesis of virus-specific RNA with RNA synthetase from E. coli infected with phage MS2 or Qb . Science 157: 701-703 (1967).
• together with Charles Weissmann and Hanoch Slor: In vitro synthesis of phage RNA. The nature of the intermediates . Symposium on Quantitative Biology, Cold Spring Harbor, XXXIII, 83-100 (1968).
• Initiation of DNA synthesis by oligoribonucleotides . In: Gene Expression and Its Regulation (edited by Francis Kenney et al.), Pp. 301-309 (1973).
• together with Hiroshi Sano: RNA nicking activity associated with DNA ligase of T4 infected E. coli . Properties and influences on in vitro reactions of ligase . Nucleic Acids Research , 2, 1609-1620 (1975).
• together with Udo Wienand and Carla Brüschke: Cloning of double stranded DNAs derived from polysomal mRNA of maize endosperm. Isolation and characterization of zein clones . Nucleic Acids Research 6, 2707-2715 (1979).
• together with José A. Pintor-Toro and Peter Langridge: Isolation and characterization of maize genes coding for zein proteins of the 21000 dalton size class . Nucleic Acids Research 10: 3845-3860 (1982).
• together with Christian Toloczyki: Occurrence of 9 homologous repeat units in the external spacer region of a nuclear maize rRNA gene unit . Nucleic Acids Research 14: 4969-4986 (1986).
• together with Tom Quayle: Functional analysis of the -300 region of maize zein genes . Molecular Genetics and Genomics 231: 369-374 (1992).
• together with Frank Hochholdinger and Woong June Park: Maize root system and genetic analysis of its formation . In: Plant Roots. The Hidden Half, 3rd edition (edited by Yoav Waisel, Amram Eshel, Uzi Kafkafi), pp. 239-248 (2002).

Web links

• Page from Günter Feix at the University of Freiburg