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Scientists of DNA
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Friedrich Miescher
Friedrich Miescher was the first scientist to find and identify nucleic acids, then called nuclein. He discovered DNA when he was examining a bandage and isolated a new molecule called nuclein. This started the challenge to understand what makes everything different. -
Erwin Chargaff
Erwin Chargaff discovered that the nitrogenous bases adenine and thymine are almost equal in amount and the same applied for guanine and cytosine. With this information, scientist could build the double helix knowing which nitrogenous base goes with which and how much goes with it. -
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin discovered that DNA is in a "x" shaped pattern and that shows the DNA are coiled and that the nitrogenous bases are near the center of the DNA molecule. Franklin recorded the scattering patterns of X-rays of DNA on film and found a clear pattern after multiple tries. This discovery helped Watson and Crick form the double helix model of DNA by giving them the information that the nitrogenous bases are near the center of the DNA and that DNA is coiled in a helix. -
Hershey & Chase
Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase discovered that DNA was the genetic information of phages and actually all living things. They did this by creating an experiment to test which part of the bacteriophage entered the bacterial cell. This helped with the DNA model because the experiment convinced scientists that DNA was the genetic material found in genes in all living cells. -
Watson & Crick
James Watson and Francis Crick accurately described the structure of the DNA double helix. The two scientist made their discovery by reading other scientists' work, like Friedrich Miescher, Phoebus Levene, and Erwin Chargaff, and made the idea understandable. It helped us to understand DNA because it gave DNA a shape and put the "ingredients" of DNA (sugar, nitrogenous bases, and proteins) in a specific order that was simplified. -
Meselson & Stahl
Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl created an experiment that tested conservative, semi-conservative, and dispersive models for DNA replication. They made a test that would move the most dense molecules to the bottom of a liquid in a vial and the least dense float more.
