Klaus Weber

Klaus Weber ( born April 5, 1936 in Łódź ) is a German biochemist and molecular biologist who was involved in the development of several widely used laboratory techniques in molecular biology and biochemistry.

Weber studied chemistry at the Albert -Ludwigs- University of Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1964. He was from 1965 for ten years at Harvard University, where he was in the group of James D. Watson and in 1972 full professor. In 1975 he became director of the Department of Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. In 1987 he became honorary professor at the University of Göttingen. In 2004 he retired at the Max Planck Institute.

He is particularly concerned with research on the cytoskeleton ( microtubules and microfilaments as ). He developed with Mary Osborn and Elias Lazarides the technique of immunofluorescence microscopy. In collaboration with the laboratory of Thomas Tuschl Weber developed a technique to eliminate artificial snippets of RNA genes ( RNA interference, iRNA ).

In 1997 he received the Otto Warburg Medal and 1984 the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent (1997).

Weber is with the biochemist Mary Osborn ( born 1940 ) married, with whom he also published over 200 works. Among them is a much-cited work on gel electrophoresis of proteins, which introduced the SDS- PAGE technique (The reliability of molecular weight Determinations by dodecyl sulfate - polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, J. Biolog. Chemical, Volume 244, 1969, pp. 4406-4412 ).