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Walter Jakob Gehring (20 March 1939[2] – 29 May 2014[3])[4] was a Swiss developmental biologist who was a professor at the Biozentrum Basel of the University of Basel, Switzerland. He obtained his PhD at the University of Zurich in 1965 and after two years as a research assistant of Ernst Hadorn he joined Alan Garen's group at Yale University in New Haven as a postdoctoral fellow.[5]
In 1983 Gehring and his collaborators (William McGinnis, Michael S. Levine, Ernst Hafen, Richard Garber, Atsushi Kuroiwa, Johannes Wirz), discovered the homeobox, a DNA segment characteristic for homeotic genes which is not only present in arthropods and their ancestors, but also in vertebrates including man.[9]
Gehring was also involved in the development and application of enhancer trapping methods. He and his collaborators identified PAX6 as a master control gene for eye development, which led to a new theory about the monophyletic origin of the eyes in evolution.[10]
^Gehring, W. J.; Kuroiwa, A.; Hafen, E.; Levine, M. S.; McGinnis, W. (March 1984). "A conserved DNA sequence in homoeotic genes of the Drosophila Antennapedia and bithorax complexes". Nature. 308 (5958): 428–433. Bibcode:1984Natur.308..428M. doi:10.1038/308428a0. PMID6323992. S2CID4235713.
Walter, Niklaus (2002). "From Transdetermination to the Homeodomain at Atomic Resolution: An interview with Walter J. Gehring". Int. J. Dev. Biol. 46 (1): 29–37. PMID11902685.
