Walter Schaffner

Walter Schaffner (born October 26, 1944 in Aarau ) is a Swiss molecular biologist. He was director of the Institute for Molecular Biology at the University of Zurich .

Live and act

Schaffner studied zoology at the University of Zurich with a diploma under Ernst Hadorn in 1970 and received a certificate in molecular biology from the Swiss Commission for Molecular Biology (SKMB) in 1974. In 1976 he received his doctorate with Charles Weissmann at the University of Zurich with distinction in molecular biology (dissertation: The nanovariant RNAs: nucleotide sequence and interaction with replicase ${\displaystyle Q_{\beta }}$ ) and he was a post-doctoral student with Frederick Sanger in Cambridge and in 1977/78 at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory . He became group leader under Max Birnstiel at the Institute for Molecular Biology II at the University of Zurich and in 1979 assistant professor. In 1987 he became full professor and director of the Institute for Molecular Biology II and from 1999 to 2007 he was director of both institutes for molecular biology.

At the beginning of the 1980s, he was one of the first to discover enhancers for the SV40 tumor virus (which was also discovered by Peter Gruss around the same time ). He was able to couple this activation gene of the virus with the gene for producing red blood pigment and thus stimulate a cell that had been reprogrammed by the virus to produce red blood pigment. He gave the word enhancer for these genes.

In 1984 he received the Prize for Young Scientists of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) and in 1985 he became a lecturer at FEBS. Since 1984 he has been an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization . In 1986 he received the Cloëtta Prize , in 1987 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Uppsala , in 1989 he received the Louis Jeantet Prize and in 1990 he became a member of the Academia Europaea . In 2002 he became a member of the Swiss Research Council. In 1999 he received the Carus Prize .

Web links

• Biography, Institute for Research in Biomedicine