After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1968, he went on to get a master’s in pharmacy from the Free University of Berlin in 1971. But, always interested in biochemistry, he pursued a doctorate in that field at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There he turned his attention to studying DNA on the advice of the Nobel laureate Feodor Lynen, who had been recognized for his research on cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.

Scientists had long known that DNA replication was the process by which cells pass on the instructions needed for carrying out all the functions of a living organism. The process requires an enzyme called DNA polymerase, as well as some sort of primer that provides the starting point for replication. While still a graduate student, Dr. Messing demonstrated that this primer is a piece of RNA that is complementary to the DNA that needs to be replicated.

In 1974, he attended a conference at which Dr. Sanger presented early work on mapping the sequence of the DNA strand in a virus. (Dr. Sanger had won one Nobel Prize and would go on to earn a second.) Dr. Messing thought the process could be accelerated by cloning DNA and sequencing different chunks of it in parallel. He spent the next few years, including his research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, developing a suitable method for cloning genetic information.

When he moved to the United States in 1978, Dr. Messing continued to work on his method for improving DNA sequencing. His first major success with shotgun sequencing came in 1981. Together with a team of biologists from the University of California, Davis, he was able to sequence the genome of the cauliflower mosaic virus.

Once he had the tools to unlock complex genetic information, Dr. Messing moved on to studying food crops. “He was drawn to the utility of improving food crops,” Dr. Goodman said, “rather than playing around with model plants.”

Other scientists used the shotgun sequencing technique in the Human Genome Project to identify approximately 20,000 genes in humans. Automation and further iterations of shotgun sequencing also allowed researchers to develop drugs targeting faulty proteins encoded by certain genes, and even helped them profile the genetic makeup of various tumors.

Dr. Messing was recruited to the Waksman Institute at Rutgers as research director in 1985. He was promoted to director shortly afterward.