[4] Weintraub performed his Ph.D. dissertation research in the laboratory of Howard Holtzer,[5] studying red blood cell development and production (erythropoeisis) in chicken embryos.
[7] While still only a graduate student, Weintraub's early work contributed significantly to the fields of developmental and cellular biology, yielding numerous peer-reviewed publications and setting the stage for the next chapter in his research explorations.
[10] His research at Princeton, which would continue during his years in Seattle, applied enzymatic and traditional biochemical isolation/separation techniques to clarify the relationship between the physical structure of genes and their expression (the process by which DNA is transcribed into messenger RNA, and eventually into Protein.
[12] In 1978, Weintraub joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), established in 1971 as an independent affiliate of the University of Washington (UW), Seattle.
[20][21] Later studies by the same group of investigators at FHCRC further characterized the structural and functional characteristics of myoD and its nuclear-localized protein product,[22][23] which were found to be present in organisms as diverse as nematode worms, frogs, mice, and humans.
[24] During the final years of his life, Weintraub's work used myoD to delve broadly and deeply into the areas of regulatory proteins, gene expression, and the molecular control of cell differentiation.
[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] As part of this work, his lab pioneered a molecular biology technique known as the Selection And Amplification Binding (SAAB) assay, which is used to find the DNA-binding sites for proteins.