Jean Brachet

Jean Brachet (1909 - 1988) is one of the founders of the Embryologie experimental and chemical and of the Molecular biology. For this reason, it can be regarded as the continuator of the work of his father Albert Brachet, embryologist and professor at the Medical college of the Universit3e libre de Bruxelles.

It is in this same faculty that Jean Brachet studies medicine. It obtains its diploma in 1934, with the greatest distinction. Very active, he works in many laboratories and several zoological stations. In 1938, he sees himself offering the pulpit of Animal Morphology to the Universit3e libre de Bruxelles.

The shortly after the war, the embryology becomes biochemical , i.e. one is concerned with highlight the substances responsible for the transformations which will lead egg to the adult form while passing by various embryonic stages. Brachet studies molecules up to that point little characterized, which one still calls at the time the thymonucleic acids and zymonucleic (respectively the DNA and the ARN). He discovers that the thymonucleic acid is component chromosomes and that he is synthesized when the cells divide after fecundation. He highlights the existence of acids zymonucleic in all the cellular types (whereas it was thought at the time these molecules were characteristic of the vegetable cells and the lower eucaryotes). Lastly, it shows that these acids are particularly abundant in the cells which are very active in proteinic term of synthesis.

With other researchers of the same group like Raymond Jeener, Hubert Chantrenne, Maurice Will wander and Rene Thomas, Jean Brachet constitutes one of the figures of the beginnings of molecular biology. He was one of the most fertile researchers in this field and its work is the traditional ones universally known and frequently quoted. Its name must be registered beside Crick, of Watson, Monod, Jacob, Lwoff who threw this very new light on the biomolecular mechanisms of the Génétique and of the Morphogenèse.

It receives in 1948 the Prix Francqui. He becomes foreign member of the Royal Society in 1966.

His/her daughter, Reads Brachet, wrote a book with her memory entitled “Jean Brachet, my father” .

External bond

Site of the Institute of molecular biology and medicine (IBM)

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