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Miescher
Miescher isolated nuclein from the nucleus by trying to break up all of the parts that make up a cell in lymphoid cells. The discovery of nuclein was very important because nuclein are now referred to as nucleic acids and are the building blocks of DNA. Without this discovery later scientist would not have been able to find what they have discovered because they would not know what made up DNA. -
Chargaff
Chargaff discovered that the percentages of adenine are equal to thymine and the percentages of guanine are equal to cytosine in DNA. Knowing how the bases pair helps explain how the strands of DNA are held together. Through a series of experiments Chargaff was able to separate purines and the pyrimidines to put them under ultraviolet light and discovered each base absorbs light at different amounts and was able to determine how much of which bases are present in DNA. -
Hershey and Chase
Hershey and Chase discovered DNA was actually genetic material instead of what most believed was protein. Through a series of experiments in which bacteriophages infect bacteria the DNA enters the cell but most proteins do not and concluded DNA was were the hereditary material was located. This is important is the understanding of DNA because it shows that DNA is how organisms inherited their traits and where those instructions are located. -
Watson and Crick
Watson and Crick are the scientist credited with discovering the double helix shape of DNA. Through many failed attempts at model building and taking information from other scientist's discoveries they were able to find the correct shape and order of bases of DNA. Knowing the shape of DNA helps the current understanding of DNA because we now know how genetic information is stored in an organism and how the genetic information is passed down to the organism's offspring. -
Franklin
Franklin was crucial is the discovery of the shape of DNA. Her discoveries were mainly about the molecular structure of DNA. By taking X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA, in a process she called X-ray diffraction, she was able to show a helical form of the molecule and these discoveries were taken by Watson and Crick to find the structure of DNA which is fundamental in knowing how genetic instructions are stored and passed from organism to offspring. -
Meselson and Stahl
Meselson and Stahl proved that the semiconservative model of
DNA replication was correct, which was a theory that stated DNA replicates when one strand of the parent double helix is preserved in each new DNA molecule. By spinning DNA extracted at different times during the experiment, they were able to see how new and old DNA interacted during each round of replication, showing the replication process and how vital it is in understanding how DNA replicates.
