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Friedrich Miescher
He was known for extracting DNA and found exciting results, which would later be one of the most critical building blocks for the future. He discovered how to isolate DNA from a cell. He experimented with white blood cells. -
Frederick Griffith
He found out how to isolate R cells and S cells in mice and tested them using heat. He discovered that heat kills the S cells. -
Barbara McClintock
She figured out that some genes could be mobile and also found out that mobile elements like transposons. The jumping genes could move along the chromosomes to a different site, and these changes affected other genes. She used corn and analyzed it. -
Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty & Colin McCleod
They wanted to try to figure out the transforming principle. They figured this out by first injecting lipids and proteins, which destroyed the S cell enzymes. They also learned that cells could be changed by the DNA that is in them. -
Erwin Chargaff
He was known for his discovery that adenine and thymine are equally proportional and guanine with cytosine. He also learned that different species have different proportions of nucleotides. -
Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase
They found that DNA satisfies the first property of heredity and transmits a full complement of genetic information. They figure this out by injecting a virus into a bacteria cell. -
Rosalind Franklin & Maurice Wilkins
They were able to crystallize a DNA molecule and also were able to examine it with an x-ray then. Watson and Crick used this image to build the DNA model then. -
James Watson & Frances Crick
These two scientists discovered the double helix structure of DNA. This structure consists of two spiral long DNA strands, both containing monomer nucleotides. -
Linus Pauling
He discovered the alpha-helix and the beta-sheet in a DNA molecule. This discovery ended up being the backbone of tens of thousands of proteins. He figured these interesting discoveries through chemistry. -
Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl
They discovered the semi-conservative replication of DNA. This is when each strand of DNA makes a template to create a new complementary strand. To make this discovery, they used e.coli bacteria. -
Paul Berg
He discovered that DHA from two organisms could be combined through his gene-splicing experiments. These experiments ended up being the first human-made recombinant DNA. He used bacteria viruses for his experiments. -
Frederick Sanger
He figured out the "plus and minus"method for rapid DNA sequencing. DNA was used and synthesized from templates to make random sets of DNA molecules. He tested this system by using most of the DNA sequence of bacteriophage X174. -
Kary Mullis
He discovered the DNA polymerase chain reaction. It is a technique that allows a specific stretch of DNA to be copied billions of times in only a few hours. This reaction uses the DNA segment to be copied, two oligonucleotide primers, nucleotides, and the DNA polymerase enzyme. He worked with DNA molecules, bacteria, and viruses. -
J. Craig Venter
He discovered a fast way to identify genes. This technique was used to sequence tags, DNA segments in expressed genes to identify unknown genes in other organisms or cells. The element was also used to identify thousands of human genes. This technique was used to determine the gene responsible for a type of cancer.
