Eric Wieschaus (Princeton/HHMI): Finding Genes that Control Development

Eric Wieschaus and Christiane Nusslein-Volhard wanted to understand which genes regulated embryonic development in Drosophila. It took them 2 years to design their experiment and only a few months to execute. A combination of good design and good luck allowed them to start with 40,000 flies and identify just 139 genes necessary for embryonic development.