Jozef Schell

Marc van Montagu and Jozef Schell.

Jozef Stefaan (Jeff) Schell (born July 20, 1935 in Antwerp , † April 17, 2003 in Brussels ) was a Belgian molecular biologist .

Schell studied zoology and microbiology in Ghent . From 1967 to 1995 he was a professor at Ghent University , where he founded the “Laboratory for General Genetics ”. From 1978 to 2000 he was director and head of the “Molecular Basics of Plant Breeding ” department at the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne . Since 1980 he has also been an honorary professor at the University of Cologne and since 1994 professor at the Collège de France in Paris . He has received numerous prizes, including the Gregor Mendel Medal in 1985, the Wolf Prize for Agricultural Science in 1990, the Prix ​​Charles-Léopold Mayer in 1990, the Max Planck Research Prize in 1992, the Grande médaille de l'Académie des sciences in 1997 and the Japan Prize 1998 together with Marc van Montagu . He was also a member of the Leopoldina (since 1981), the National Academy of Sciences (since 1985), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .

Schell was one of the pioneers of green genetic engineering . In his work on the interactions between plants and soil bacteria in nitrogen fixation and the development of plant tumors , it was shown that some bacteria can transfer genes to plants. The Ti plasmid of the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens became the basis of the first and still very important vector ( gene ferry ) for the production of transgenic plants through Schell's investigations . Using this technique, genetically modified tobacco plants that were resistant to the antibiotic kanamycin were produced for the first time in 1983 .

literature

• Scientific obituary by Marc van Montagu : Jeff Schell (1935–2003): steering Agrobacterium-mediated plant gene engineering. In: Trends in Plant Science. Vol. 8, Issue 8, August 2003, pp. 353-354. (engl.)
• Heinz Saedler : Jozef Stefaan Schell: July 20, 1935– April 17, 2003. Obituary. In: Yearbook of the Max Planck Society 2004. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-927579-18-1 , pp. 119–120.

Web links

• Literature by and about Jozef Schell in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry about Jozef Stefaan Schell in the database of the Wilhelm Exner Medal Foundation .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ H. Joos, B. Timmerman, M. Van Montagu, J. Schell: Genetic analysis of transfer and stabilization of Agrobacterium DNA in plant cells . In: EMBO J. 2 (12), 1983, pp. 2151-2160.