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Transforming principle definition12/3/2023 ![]() Bacterial transformation is the process by which a bacterium can get and use new genetic material from its surroundings. Starting in 1935, Oswald Avery, another researcher at the Rockefeller Institute, with his research associates Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, performed experiments that showed that DNA facilitated a genetic phenomenon in bacteria called bacterial transformation. In 1944, nearly a decade before Hershey and Chase’s work, scientists published sound evidence that genes were made of DNA rather than protein. The Hershey-Chase experiments were not the first studies to oppose the prevailing theory in the early 1900s that genetic material was composed of proteins. From that, some scientists claimed that genes must have been made of protein, not DNA. Conversely, scientists found that proteins had many more building blocks and therefore more possible arrangements than DNA. In other words, genes needed to have the capacity for enough variation to account for the different traits scientists observe in organisms. Those scientists considered variability necessary for DNA to function as genetic material. Some scientists concluded that a repeating sequence of nucleotides in DNA limited potential for variability. ![]() According to Levene and other proponents of the hypothesis, DNA consisted of repeating sets of four different building blocks, called nucleotides. Phoebus Levene, a researcher at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City, New York, proposed the tetranucleotide hypothesis for DNA in 1933. Scientists supported that idea in part because of a hypothesis called the tetranucleotide hypothesis. Instead, those scientists supported the idea that DNA was a molecule that maintained cell structure. Up until the 1940s, some scientists accepted the idea that genes were not made of DNA. They had also verified that all cells contained DNA, though DNA’s function remained ambiguous. By 1900, scientists had identified the complete chemical composition, or building blocks, of DNA. Genes control how organisms grow and develop and are the material basis for organisms’ ability to inherit traits like eye color or fur color from their parents. In the early twentieth century, scientists debated whether genes were made of DNA or protein. The Hershey-Chase experiments settled the long-standing debate about the composition of genes, thereby allowing scientists to investigate the molecular mechanisms by which genes function in organisms. ![]() The most well-known Hershey-Chase experiment, called the Waring Blender experiment, provided concrete evidence that genes were made of DNA. The experiments followed decades of scientists’ skepticism about whether genetic material was composed of protein or DNA. Hershey and Chase performed their experiments, later named the Hershey-Chase experiments, on viruses that infect bacteria, also called bacteriophages. In 19, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase conducted a series of experiments at the Carnegie Institute of Washington in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, that verified genes were made of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. The Hershey-Chase Experiments (1952), by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase ![]()
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