Peter Starlinger

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Peter Starlinger (born March 18, 1931 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † September 1, 2017 ) was a German geneticist and molecular biologist .

Life

As the son of Wilhelm Starlinger (chief physician in Königsberg and forced laborer in the Gulag ), Peter Starlinger studied medicine at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . From 1952 he worked in Adolf Butenandt's virus research group in Tübingen. He did his doctorate there on the tobacco mosaic virus and then went to Caltech as a post-doctoral student . He then switched to the molecular genetics group newly founded by Max Delbrück at the University of Cologne (Institute for Genetics). Starlinger was finally appointed professor of genetics and radiation biology at the University of Cologne. Since 1982 he has also been an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research . At times he was director of the Institute for Genetics at the University of Cologne.

In 1979 he received the Robert Koch Prize and in 1985 the Otto Warburg Medal .

Starlinger and his then doctoral student Heinz Saedler discovered transposon elements ( insertion sequences , IS, the name was suggested by Saedler and Starlinger) in the genes of bacteria around 1968 . They found her in the study of galactose - operon of E. coli , which she studied in a similar way as the early 1960s, Jacob and Monod the Lac operon . Such insertion sequences were discovered independently at about the same time by Jim Shapiro in London and earlier in the 1940s by Barbara McClintock in maize, although she had not yet used any molecular genetic methods. Shortly afterwards Starlinger and others discovered that the IS elements were not random insertions, but special mobile elements with a transcription stop mark (around 1972). Starlinger (and Saedler) then also turned to plant genetics, particularly with maize.

In 1981 he became a full member, and in 1997 a corresponding member, of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts . Since 1987 he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences and since 1989 a full member of the Academia Europaea .

In the 1980s, Peter Starlinger was involved in socio-political issues relating to nuclear armament and the benefits of genetic engineering in agriculture.

Fonts

  • Starlinger / Saedler: Insertion mutations in microorganisms , Biochimie, Volume 54, 1972, pp. 177-185
  • Saedler / Starlinger: Twenty-five years of transposable element research in Cologne , in Fedoroff, Botstein (Ed.): The Dynamic Genome - Barbara McClintock's ideas in the century of genetics , Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1992
  • Starlinger: Fifty good years , Annual Review Plant Biology , Volume 56, 2005, pp. 1-13
  • Starlinger / Saedler in Science Citation Classics on their article IS elements in microorganisms , Current Topics Microbiology Immunology, Volume 75, 1976, p. 111, Online, PDF; 232 kB

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Coupland, Paul Schulze-Lefert, Miltos Tsiantis: Peter Starlinger (obituary of the MPI for Plant Breeding Research ). Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, September 14, 2017, archived from the original on September 20, 2017 ; accessed on May 12, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Peter Starlinger: Peace concerns us all. Scientists and the Peace Movement . In: Union monthly journal . Volume 34, No. 9 , 1983, pp. 587-593 ( PDF ).
  3. ↑ Peter Starlinger: Nuclear War . In: Questions on Peace and War. Lecture series by Cologne scientists . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-8046-8639-7 .
  4. ↑ Peter Starlinger: Miracle cure against hunger and poverty? Genetic Engineering, Agriculture and Third World . In: Union monthly journal . Vol. 35, no. 10 , 1984, pp. 615-624 ( PDF ).
personal data
SURNAME Starlinger, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geneticist and molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH 1st September 2017