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Friedrich Miescher
Miescher was the first to describe DNA and determined that it is not a protein, but rather rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. He determined this by extracting DNA from cell nuclei. -
Frederick Griffith
Griffith discovered that heat-killed bacteria could not cause a disease, but could still pass hereditary material to other types of bacteria, remaining lethal. He used Mice to test his experiment. -
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock discovered that genes could be mobile. These genes called “Jumping Genes” can move along the chromosome to different sites, and during their move affect other genes. She won a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1983. -
Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty & Colin McCleod
Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty, and COlin McCleod discovered that the material that passed down hereditary information was DNA, and not proteins. They discovered this using DNA degrading enzymes on lipid, protein, and nucleic acids extracted from S cells -
Rosalind Franklin & Maurice Wilkins
Rosalind Franklin was able to make the first clear x-ray diffraction image of DNA occurring in cells. She used the image to calculate the length of the molecule and identify a repeating pattern. -
Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase
Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase proved that DNA, not protein, satisfied the property of a hereditary molecule. They used a bacteriophage to prove that the virus injects cells with DNA to force the cell into creating more virus particles. -
Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling was able to find out that DNA was in the shape of a helix, and proposed that it was in the shape of a triple helix using very little data. -
James Watson & Frances Crick
James Watson and Frances Crick used Rosalind Franklin’s image and data to create the first accurate model of the double helix structure of DNA -
Frederick Sanger
Frederick Sanger was the first person to obtain a protein sequence, proving that proteins were ordered molecules, and that genes and DNA that make the proteins also have a sequence. He later won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1958 -
Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl
Messelson and Stahl’s experiment proved that DNA replicated itself semi-conservatively. This means that each strand in the DNA molecule serves as a template for the new complementary strand. -
Erwin Chargaff
Erwin Chargaff discovered that the amount of thymine and adenine were identical in all DNA molecules, as are the amounts of cytosine and guanine. This hinted towards the base pair makeup of DNA, and allowed other scientists to make this connection. -
Paul Berg
Paul Berg was able to insert DNA from bacteria into the DNA of a virus. In doing so he created a DNA molecule made up of parts from different organisms, this is now known as recombinant DNA. He won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 -
Kary Mullis
Kary Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction process. This process allows a small amount of DNA to be copied in large quantities over a short period of time. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993. -
J. Craig Venter
J. Craig Venter and his company were able to sequence the entirety of the human genome using a technique called “shotgun sequencing”. This allows for small sections of DNA to be decoded, and then later assembled into a full length genome sequence.
