| Eckard Wimmer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22 May 1936 Berlin, Germany |
| Fields | Biology, Virology |
| Institutions | Stony Brook University |
| Alma mater | Göttingen University |
| Known for | Discoveries in poliovirus biology, Chemical synthesis of a virus |
| Notable awards | M.W. Beijerinck Virology Prize 2011 |
Eckard Wimmer (born 22 May 1936) is an American virologist most famous for his seminal work on the molecular biology of poliovirus and the first chemical synthesis of a live virus.
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Wimmer was born on 22 May 1936 in Berlin, Germany. He graduated from Göttingen University, Göttingen, Germany in 1959 with an undergraduate degree in chemistry, and subsequently with the degree of Doctor rerum naturalium in 1962. He remained at Göttingen University for training in organic chemistry until 1964, followed by two years at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
His faculty appointments included positions at the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL (1966-1968); Department of Microbiology, St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO (1968-1974); and Department of Microbiology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY (1974 – present). He served as Chairman of the Department at Stony Brook from 1984-1999, and was appointed Distinguished Professor in 2002.
Wimmer made numerous contributions and discoveries critical for the understanding of virus biology. They include the complete nucleotide sequence of the poliovirus genome [1], identification of a protein covalently attached to the viral RNA genome and its role in viral RNA replication [2], describing the pathways of poliovirus protein processing, discovery of a novel cap-independent mechanism of protein synthesis initiation [3], identification of the cellular receptor for poliovirus attachment [4] and dissection of antigenic determinants of the virus particle [5]. Wimmer was the first to demonstrate replication of a virus in a cell-free system [6] and to chemically synthesize the complete viral genome and regenerate a live virus from it [7]. At the time this was considered a controversial discovery, and Wimmer was criticized for this work by mass media[8][9], and some scientists [10][11]. Later he was recognized as a trendsetter in synthetic biology, and his work has many important applications to development of vaccines and other biotechnology products. In his further studies Wimmer and his associates proposed to use synthetic viruses with deoptimized codon and codon-pair composition for creation of new vaccines [12]. He has made significant other contributions to our understanding of poliovirus replication, pathogenesis, and immunology.