History of DNA

Question 1

Gregor Mendel

Answer 1

1865
Basic principles of genetics through breeding experiments with pea plants

Question 2

Friedrich Miescher

Answer 2

1869
Swiss physiological chemist identified “nuclein” in the nuclei of human human white blood cells (DNA)

Question 3

Sir Archibald Edward Garrod

Answer 3

1902
Link between genes and “inborn errors of metabolism” (Mendel’s theories with human metabolism)

Question 4

Robert Feulgen

Answer 4

1914
German physiologist/chemist
Discovered that fuchsin dye stained DNA (Feulgen stain)

Question 5

Frederick Griffith

Answer 5

1928
Transforming principle
Pneumonia bacteria get DNA through transformation
Nonvirulent Rough strain could become virulent when it took DNA from heat-killed virulent Smooth strain

Question 6

Phoebus A. Levene

Answer 6

1929
DNA is made of nucleotides (sugar, phosphate, base)
4 different bases, but concluded that they were present in the same amount and order - tetranucleotide

Question 7

Oswald Avery, Colin Macleod, Maclyn McCarly

Answer 7

1944
Confirmed DNA as the transforming principle

Question 8

Erwin Chargaff

Answer 8

1950
DNA composition is species specific
Percent composition of A and T, G and C were the same - base pair complementary rule

Question 9

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase

Answer 9

1952
Radioactive tagging of bacteriophages (DNA and protein) to prove DNA was the genetc material

Question 10

Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins

Answer 10

1952
Used x-ray crystallographic photos of crystallized DNA fibres and diffraction patters to determine the double helical shape

Question 11

James Watson and Francis Crick

Answer 11

1953
Scale models
Deduced whole 3D structure
Nobel Prize 1962