Illustration of Molecular genetics

1944 Molecular genetics

The book of science

Tom Sharp

Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, Maclyn McCarty genetics Illustration of Molecular genetics

Molecular genetics

Oswald Avery, Colin Munro MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, working with Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, by a process of elimination, removed bit by bit and repeated Griffith’s experiment until the bacteria were unable to transform, and thus isolated and identified DNA as the material of genes and chromosomes.

Nucleic acid polymers

In the nucleus of eukaryotic cells and inside the walls of prokaryotic cells long polymers encode the instructions for making every living organism on Earth.

If we were to tinker

Now we know how to flip the switches maybe we could cure cancer without trying to breed superkids. Maybe we could abolish sickle cells without making everyone the same.

Cells contain lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids. Before this work, scientists thought that cellular proteins were responsible for inheritance.

Friedrich Miescher isolated DNA from cells in 1869; Francis Crick and James Watson described its molecular structure in 1953.

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