Diethard Tautz (born 17 August 1957 in Glonn) is a German biologist and geneticist, who is primarily concerned with the molecular basis of the evolution of mammals. Since 2006 he is director at the

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology is a German institute for evolutionary biology. It is located in Plön, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. History The institute was founded by German zoologist Otto Zacharias as ''Hydrobiologische S ...

Plön Plön (; Holsatian: ''Plöön'') is the district seat of the Plön district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and has about 8,700 inhabitants. It lies right on the shores of Schleswig-Holstein's biggest lake, the Great Plön Lake, as well as o ...

Life

From 1976 to 1981, Tautz studied biology at the University of Frankfurt and at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W� ...

. He completed a doctorate in 1983 at the

EMBL The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 27 member states, two prospect states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and ...

in Heidelberg and the

Max Planck Institute Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE) * Max (gorilla) ...

in Tübingen. He spent two years as a postdoc in Cambridge / UK. From 1985 to 1987 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen as a postdoc. After his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...

in 1988 he worked as a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology until 1990. Tautz did a second habilitation at the University of Tübingen in molecular biology and then went on as a group leader at the Institute of Genetics of the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. In 1991 he was appointed professor at the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich in 1991, and at the Institute of Genetics at the

University of Cologne The University of Cologne (german: Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388 and is one of the most prestigious and research intensive universities in Germany. It was the sixth university to ...

in 1998. Since 2006 Tautz is a "Scientific Member" of the Max Planck Society and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön.

Scientific contribution

Tautz's research covers a broad interest area in the fields of

molecular evolution Molecular evolution is the process of change in the sequence composition of cellular molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins across generations. The field of molecular evolution uses principles of evolutionary biology and population genet ...

and

developmental genetics Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and differentiation of stem c ...

. His thesis dealt with the first generic description of simple sequences (now often called

microsatellite A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...

s). This work became later the basis for his development of the

genetic fingerprinting DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual's DNA characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding. DNA profiling is a forensic t ...

technology that is nowadays used in paternity testing, forensics and population genetics and for which he obtained a broad patent. For his second postdoc phase in Tübingen, he switched to developmental genetics joining the groups around Herbert Jäckle and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. His work there focused on the molecular characterization of segmentation genes in

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many speci ...

. He cloned and characterized the segmentation gene ‘'hunchback'’ and he developed the "whole mount"

in situ hybridization ''In situ'' hybridization (ISH) is a type of hybridization that uses a labeled complementary DNA, RNA or modified nucleic acids strand (i.e., probe) to localize a specific DNA or RNA sequence in a portion or section of tissue (''in situ'') or ...

technology that is nowadays used as the general standard technology for the spatial and temporal analysis of gene expression in embryos. Based on the work on segmentation processes in Drosophila, he developed a general interest in studying the evolution of segmentation processes, especially in the model system Tribolium and he was involved in generating the first full genome sequencing for this beetle species. He is considered to be one of the founders of the new field of evolution of developmental processes (often called

Evo-Devo Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved. The field grew from 19th-century beginn ...

) and he was the first editor in chief of the journal ''Development Genes and Evolution''. As professor for Zoology in Munich he expanded his interests into the fields of

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and po ...

, speciation research and molecular phylogeny reconstruction. He studied the mechanisms of

sympatric speciation Sympatric speciation is the evolution of a new species from a surviving ancestral species while both continue to inhabit the same geographic region. In evolutionary biology and biogeography, sympatric and sympatry are terms referring to organi ...

cichlids Cichlids are fish from the family Cichlidae in the order Cichliformes. Cichlids were traditionally classed in a suborder, the Labroidei, along with the wrasses ( Labridae), in the order Perciformes, but molecular studies have contradicted th ...

in crater lakes, hybrid speciation of

sculpin A sculpin is a type of fish that belongs to the superfamily Cottoidea in the order Scorpaeniformes.Kane, E. A. and T. E. Higham. (2012)Life in the flow lane: differences in pectoral fin morphology suggest transitions in station-holding demand ...

s in the Rhine system and was the first to show a sister group relationship between crustaceans and insects in the phylogeny of arthropods. With his move to the University of Cologne he started projects in

comparative genomics Comparative genomics is a field of biological research in which the genomic features of different organisms are compared. The genomic features may include the DNA sequence, genes, gene order, regulatory sequences, and other genomic structural ...

, with a special focus on the evolution of new genes, which resulted in the discovery of de novo evolution of genes from non-coding sequences. Through studying a segmentation gene in insects, he found the first eukaryotic poly-cistronic peptide-coding gene. In Cologne he started also his current projects on the genetic basis of adaptations to new environmental conditions. He uses natural populations and

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics ( morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all specie ...

of the

house mouse The house mouse (''Mus musculus'') is a small mammal of the order Rodentia, characteristically having a pointed snout, large rounded ears, and a long and almost hairless tail. It is one of the most abundant species of the genus ''Mus''. Although ...

(''Mus musculus'') as a model system for this work, which he analyses with methods from

, comparative genomics and

quantitative genetics Quantitative genetics deals with phenotypes that vary continuously (such as height or mass)—as opposed to discretely identifiable phenotypes and gene-products (such as eye-colour, or the presence of a particular biochemical). Both branches u ...

Memberships

From 2005 to 2006 Tautz was president of the German Zoological Society. Since 2009 he is president of the Association of Biology, Biosciences and Biomedicine in Germany (VBIO). He is an elected member of several scientific organisations and academies, for example

European Molecular Biology Organization The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...

and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. He is also editor of scientific journals and, since 2012, senior editor of "eLIFE" and since 2014 senior editor of "Molecular Ecology".

Honors and awards

* 1990 Gerhard-Hess-Prize of the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

(DFG) * 1995 * 2021

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or , BVO) is the only federal decoration of Germany. It is awarded for special achievements in political, economic, cultural, intellect ...

Publications

Research Gate Publication list

References

External links

Personal webpage of the Max Planck Institute in Plön

Mus musculus domesticus. Vortrag Speciation 2010 (YouTube)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tautz, Diethard 1957 births Living people 20th-century German biologists German geneticists 21st-century German biologists Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Max Planck Institute directors Goethe University Frankfurt alumni University of Tübingen alumni Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Academic staff of the University of Cologne People from Ebersberg (district)