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Friedrich Miesher
While studying at a respected labratory in Germany, Friedrich Miescher was handed research responsibilities of white blood cells. As a result, Miescher began to isolate and experiment with a new molecule - nuclien - from the cell's nucleus. Friedrich was the foundation for numerous molecular discoveries in the future; he worked with first raw preparations of DNA. -
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Morgan established the chromosomal inheritance theory. At Columbia University, he started a lab with Flys, and this lab helped with studying genetic variations. He made many important discoveries through this lab, aving to do with genetics and chromosomal inheritance. And it all started with a simple mutation in a fruit fly. -
Hermann Muller
Hermann was a geneticist who was very interested in the physical and chemical aspects of genes. In 1920 he made a very important discovery having to do with x-rays and mutations. Hermann used radioactive to produce mutations in a fruit fly. This was important because it shows how x-rays damage chromosomes which will produce a mutation. -
Frederick Griffith
The Griffith experiment of 1928 deal with pnemonia bacteria and its infection of mice. The investigation ultimately became one of the first tests hinting that DNA, not protein, was the genetic coding material. This showed that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information through a process called transformation. -
Oswald Avery
Expanding on Griffith's experiment, Oswald Avery and a group of others set out to determine the chemical nature of the substance that allowed transformation. He later confirmed that the controversial substance was DNA, and that it's respsonsible for heredity. He essentially proved that Griffith's "transforming principle" was DNA, and resparked an interest for a new science in molecular genetics. -
Erwin Chargaff
Erwin Chargaff also worked to develop ideas and investigations on the composition of DNA. He discovered crucial facts that directly led to the illustrations of DNA's molecular structure. Chargaff established rules which state that in DNA there is an equal percentage of Adenine as Thymine and Guanine as Cytosine. These pairs also could nevr be crossed paired. -
Linus Pauling
In 1952, Linus showed a triple stranded helix in DNA. He had the nitrogenous bases facing out and phosphate groups facing in and three different strands intertwined. However, since the oxygen bases were all facing in, the strands repelled each other, making the triple stranded helix, actual not work. -
Hershey and Chase
Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase were additional scientiss who validated that DNA was the genetic coding material. In their "blender" experiment they used phage-bacteria viruses to demostrate and prove this theory. Their work, as well as Avery's, supported and reenforced Griffith's ideas in 1928. -
Franklin and Wilkins
Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin were biophycists and x-ray crystallographers, respectively. Together they made crucial contributions to the discovery of DNA's structure. Through there studies and detaile dmeasurements, it was suggested that DNA was helical in structure, which provided Watson and Crick with enough information to make their significant discovery. -
Watson and Crick
James Watsons and Francis Crick used the findings of Franklin and Wilkins, to conduct their own studies on DNA's actual structure. They used what was already chemically known about DNA, and published the 1st accurate modek of it's structure in 1952. Their model displayed a double-helix feature, and presented concepts pn how DNA replicants and codes hereditary information. -
Seymour Benzer
Before the 1950s, people thought that DNA strands had beads on them which were the genes. However, since Watson and Clerk discovered the actual structure, Benzer was able to discover even more. He figured the crossing over between DNA strands could occur between the Genes, or even the bases. -
Arthur Kornberg
Kornberg in his biggest discovery, worked with DNA polymerase. He isolated this enzyme which is the enzyme that synthesizes DNA. With this, he made a replication of DNA but it was cell free. Also, he found the replication only will happen if four nucleotides are present. -
Sydney Brenner
Sydney and his two colleagues showed the rRNA was not the template for building proteins. There was even another type of RNA, the kind that carries the messages to the ribosome, Messenger RNA. He discovered this using phage-infected bacteria and radioactive 32P. Mixing them together and then performing RNA extraction helped show the mRNA. -
Roy Britten
Roy discovered that mouse cells have multiple similar DNA strands. He found this by looking at the reassociation rates of DNA. We know that DNA strands encode protein, however when the temperature is at 25 degrees Celsius, reassociation occurs. The strands are not exactly the same when this happens but they are very similar. -
Frederick Sanger
Frederick was the first to discover the sequence of amino acids in the 50’s. He showed that 51 amino acids of the insulin protein are arranged in a certain order. Now, in the late 70’s he determined a way to sequence each nucleotide, however, now in science labs, there is a way used more to sequence nucleotides which is called chain termination. -
Thomas Cech
RNA was most likely the first molecule to replicate itself. But Cech’s discovery changed the central dogma. He showed that RNA is not just a transmitter in genetic info, but it is also an enzyme. That would be a ribosome. -
Pat Brown
Pat developed a technique to be able to put cDNAs embedded into glass slide. This allowed for large scale expression studies. They used these to study gene expression profiles of cancer. This also helped because now he was able to find differences in gene expressions.
