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The legacy of Carl Woese and Wolfram Zillig: from phylogeny to landmark discoveries

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 11, pages 713–719 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two pioneers of twentieth century biology passed away during the past decade, Wolfram Zillig in April 2005 and Carl Woese in December 2012. Among several other accomplishments, Woese has been celebrated for the discovery of the domain Archaea and for establishing rRNA as the 'Rosetta Stone' of evolutionary and environmental microbiology. His work inspired many scientists in various fields of biology, and among them was Wolfram Zillig, who is credited with the discovery of several unique molecular features of archaea. In this Essay, we highlight the remarkable achievements of Woese and Zillig and consider how they have shaped the archaeal research landscape.

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Figure 1: The late Carl Woese and the late Wolfram Zillig, two pioneers of the archaeal field.
Figure 2: RNA polymerase structure in the three domains of life.
Figure 3

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank P. Dennis for valuable input to this article, and they apologize to all the scientists working on archaea whose work could not be cited owing to space restrictions, and for all the important findings that could not be included in the timeline. S.V.A. was funded by intramural funds from the Max Planck Society.

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Author notes

  1. Sonja-Verena Albers, Patrick Forterre, David Prangishvili and Christa Schleper: All authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Molecular Biology of Archaea, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Karl-von-Frisch Strasse 10, 35043 Marburg, Germany.,

    Sonja-Verena Albers

  2. Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Docteur Roux, Paris, 75015, France

    Patrick Forterre & David Prangishvili

  3. Université Paris-Sud, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR8621, Orsay Cedex, 91405, France

    Patrick Forterre

  4. Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology, Archaea Biology and Ecogenomics Group, University of Vienna, Vienna, A-1090, Austria

    Christa Schleper

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Correspondence to Sonja-Verena Albers, Patrick Forterre, David Prangishvili or Christa Schleper.

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Albers, SV., Forterre, P., Prangishvili, D. et al. The legacy of Carl Woese and Wolfram Zillig: from phylogeny to landmark discoveries. Nat Rev Microbiol 11, 713–719 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3124

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