Deoxyribo
Nucleic
Acid
Early DNA Research
The earliest research on what we today know
as DNA was performed by Friedrich Miescher , a Swiss biologist, in 1868. He isolated a phosphorus-containing
substance from the nucleus of cells. He also determined the acidic nature of the
substance. Later he isolated a similar substance in the nuclei of salmon sperm
cells. Oswald Avery , Colin Macleod, and Maclyn McCarty, at the Rockefeller
Institute, proved that DNA was genetic material in 1943. Their work went against
the commonly accepted theory that proteins contained the genetic information.
Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, in 1952, published their work that
confirmed that DNA was genetic material. They won the Nobel Prize in Medicine
and Physiology in 1969 for their research.
Erwin Chargaff , of Columbia University, proposed in 1950 that all samples
of DNA contained the same four nucleotides, cytosine, C; guanine, G; adenine,
A; and thymine, T, and that the percentages of those nucleotides were always such
that %G = %C, and %A = %T.
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