Esteban Domingo Solans, PhD
- Emeritus Professor of Research at the Spanish Research Council (CSIC)
- GVN Center Directo
Esteban Domingo Solans, PhD, is “ad honorem” (emeritus) Professor of Research at the Spanish Research Council, at Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Madrid, Spain. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry (1965) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1969) from the University of Barcelona. He did postdoctoral work at the University of California (UC), Irvine, working on in vitro DNA transcription, with Dr. Robert C. Warner (1969-1973), and University of Zürich, working on genetics of bacteriophage Qβ, with Dr. Charles Weissmann (1974-1977). This work permitted the first calculation of a mutation rate for an RNA virus, and the first experimental evidence of quasispecies dynamics. His work documented the high error rates and quasispecies dynamics of animal RNA viruses, and opened the way to lethal mutagenesis as an antiviral strategy. He has published 450 research papers and several books and book chapters; h index=84. He is Doctor honoris causa from the Universities of Liège and Bern, and member of EMBO, the European Academy, the US National Academy of Sciences, and Vice-president of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain