-
Discovery of Nucleic Acids
Nucleic acids were discovered in 1868, when the twenty-four-year-old Swiss physician/biology Friedrich Miescher isolated a new compound from the nucleus of white blood cells. -
Discovery of DNA Components | Levene's Tetranucleotide
Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene was a Lithuanian-American biochemist and physician best known and remembered for his studies on the structure of nucleic acids: tetranucleotide hypothesis.
Components: adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, deoxyribose phosphate. -
Griffith Transformation Experiment
Griffith's experiment, reported by Frederick Griffith, was the first experiment suggesting that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information through a process known as transformation.
He was the first to reveal the "transformation principle", which led to the discovery that DNA acts as the carrier of genetic information. -
Avery, McLeod and McCarty
The experiment of Avery and his collaborators Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty represents one of the fundamental experiments to advance the knowledge of genetics and molecular biology.
It is evident that DNA is "main transformation". -
Journal of Experimental Medicine
Journal of Experimental Medicine is a monthly medical journal that publishes research articles and commentaries on the physiological, pathological and molecular mechanisms that comprise the host response to disease. -
Chargaff's Rules
Chargaff's Law or Chargaff's Rule, formulated by Erwin Chargaff, deals with the quantitative relationship of the nitrogen bases that make up DNA in the form of nucleotides. -
Counting Nucleobases
There was someone who started counting nucleobases... Erwin Chargaff (Professor of biochemistry):
He looked at different organisms and he simply measured the amounts of the four bases: Adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. -
Hershey-Chase Experiments
Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase had some amazing experiments going on with phages:
1. Hershey and Chase (1952): three experiments in which proteins and DNA of bacteriophages were marked with radioactive isotopes. -
Discovery of the 3D Structure of DNA | The Double Helix
The three-dimensional structure of DNA was first proposed by James Watson and Francis Crick. It is one of the most famous scientific discoveries of all time. X-ray diffraction of DNA crystals results in a cross shape on the X-ray film, which is typical of a helix-shaped molecule.