With Eric Wieschaus, published 'Mutations affecting segment number and polarity in Drosophila' in Nature, founding modern developmental genetics.
On 30 October 1980, Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus published their now-legendary paper, "Mutations affecting segment number and polarity in Drosophila," in the journal Nature. The paper reported the results of an extraordinarily systematic and laborious genetic screen conducted at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, in which the pair examined thousands of mutagenized fruit fly embryos under the microscope to identify genes controlling body segmentation.
This screen identified around 120 genes essential for establishing the body plan, many entirely novel, with evocative names such as hedgehog, wingless, and gooseberry. The paper is considered one of the most influential in twentieth-century biology, effectively founding the field of developmental genetics as understood today by demonstrating that a finite, identifiable set of genes governs the fundamental architecture of an embryo.
The work was historically significant not only for its scientific content but for the sheer scale and rigor of the systematic approach — an achievement requiring immense patience and precision, largely carried out by two young scientists working essentially as equals in a modest lab. It directly paved the way for the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the segmentation genes described continue to underpin modern understanding of human developmental disorders and cancer biology.