Stemmer, Willem

Natural selection works through the complementary processes of mutation and genetic reassortment by recombination. The oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis methods used in the foregoing examples do not allow for recombination instead, mutations are combined manually to optimize a protein sequence. Willem Stemmer at Maxygen invented a method of directed evolution that uses both mutation and recombination. This method, called... 

By JON E. NESS, STEPHEN B. DEL CARDAYRE, JEREMY MINSHULL, and WILLEM P. C. STEMMER... 

More information comes from experiments that have been done to shuffle the DNA in particnlar genes, for example by Willem Stemmer and colleagues. 

Chia-Chun J. Chang, Teddy T. Chen, Brett W. Cox, Glenn N. Dawes, Willem P. C. Stemmer, Juha Punnonen and Phillip A. Patten, Evolution of a cytokine using DNA family shuffling. Nature Biotechnology, 17 (2000), 793-797. 

Jon E. Ness, Mark Welch, Lori Giver, Manuel Bueno, Joel R. Cherry, Torben V. Borchert, Willem P. C. Stemmer and Jeremy Minshull, DNA shuffling of subgenomic sequences of subtilisin, Nature Biotechnology, 17 (1999), 893-896. 

Sharon K. Powell, Michele A. Kaloss, Anne Pinkstaff, Rebecca McKee, Irina Burimski, Michael Pensiero, Edward Otto, Willem P. C. Stemmer, Nay-Wie Soong, Breeding of retroviruses by DNA shuffling for improved stability and processing yields. Nature Biotechnology, 18 (2000), 1279-1282. 

Willem P. C. Stemmer Avidia Research Institute Redwood City, California... 

Willem P. C. Stemmer is the vice president of research and founder of Avidia Research Institute and founder of Maxygen in Redwood City, California. He is the inventor of DNA shuffling, also called molecular breeding, which gave rise to Codexis, Inc. and Verdia, Inc. Dr. Stemmer received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research was on bacterial virulence mechanisms. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in medical genetics, where he worked on antibody engineering for radioimmunotherapy of cancer. 

Willem Stemmer Vice President of Research and Founder... 

---