Lecture 21 Flashcards
Friedrick Miescher
- first isolate DNA from white blood cells found in pus on bandages
- called it nuclein
- noted it was acidic and high in phos
Albrecht Kossel
- characterized DNA
- isolated the bases
- determined DNA has 4 nitrogenous bases
Phoebus Levene
- DNA is made of nucleotides
- each nucleotide has a phosphate, base, and sugar
Tetranucleotide Structure
- proposed as the structure of DNA by Levene
- accepted as corrected for years as there was little interest in DNA by geneticists at the time
What was originially thought to be the genetic material? Why?
- protein
- very abundant - 50% of cell dry weight
- variable
- tetranucletide structure too simple to account for variability
- protein was accepted without being tested as most researchers still interested in transmission genetics at the time
Describe steps of Griffeth’s experiment
- studied streptococcus pneumoniae in mice
- smooth strain kills mice, rough strain does not
- heat killed smooth strain and injected in mouse - the mouse lived
- heat killed smooth and mixed with live rough then injected in mouse - the mouse died
What did Griffeth’s experiment show?
- something from the dead smooth bacteria transferred to the live rough bacteria to make them become virulent
- he coined this transformation
transforming principle
the term Griffeth gave to the agent that causes transformation
note he did not know what the agent was
characteristics of the transforming principle used to help identify the principle
- transformation can occur in a test tube
- transformation can be accomplished by incubating filtrate from heat killed cell with nonvirulent cells showing that intact virulent cells are not required
Avery, McCarty, and MacLeod
- identified the transforming principle
- filtrated heat killed smooth s. pneumonia
- divided between 3 tubes and treated one with Dnase, Rnase, and protease
- looked for the presence of transformation in each tube
- transformation occurred in the tubes treated with Rnase and Protease but not Dnase proving that DNA is the transforming principle
Who discovered the identity of the transforming principle?
Avery, Mccarty, and Macleod
Who discovered transformation?
Griffeth
Hershey and Chase
- DNA is the genetic agent in bacteriophages
- labeled the DNA in a T2 bacteriophage with 32P and the protein with 35S
- placed in separate flasks and allowed the viruses to infect bacteria
then separated bacteria from anything attached to them - looked to see if the bacteria were radioactive and also allowed infected bacteria to grow on a plate to see if phage reproduction occurred
- Phage reproduction occurred in both cases
- Bacterial cells only became radioactive when 32P was used
What did Hershey and Chase show?
- only the DNA from the virus went into the bacteria, the protein did not
- phage replication occurs regardless of what gets into the cell
- therefore, the DNA is the infectious agent of the bacteriophage
Why did Hershey and Chase use the isotopes they did?
- needed to distinguish the two molecules
- protein does not have Phos and would not be marked by the 32P while DNA does
- DNA does not have sulfur and would not be marked by the 35S while protein does
Fraenkel-Conrat and Singer
- RNA is the genetic material in RNA virus
- utilized tobacco mosaic virus
Yanofsky
- colinerarity exists between DNA and protein
- studied tryptophan synthetase genes and proteins using a deletion map and found that the order of the point mutations on the DNA was the same as the altered amino acids in the protein
Wilkins and Franklin
- x-ray diffraction studies to try to determine the structure of DNA
- found helical structure with two other repeating structures
Values discovered by Wilkins and Franklin
- the helical structure of DNA has a constant width of 2 nm
- repeating structure every 0.34 nm and every 3.4 nm
10 angstroms =
1 nm
Chargaff
- DNA base composition studies
- compared percentages of different bases
- determined…
- the number of purines is equal to the number of pyrimides
- the number of Adenines is equal to that of Thymine
- the number of cysteines is equal to that of guanine
How did the discoveries of Chargoff, Franklin, and Wilkins influence Watson and Crick’s model?
- figured out that a purine and pyrimidine must be paired to maintain the constant width size discovered by Wilkins and Franklin
- paired and A with T and C with G to maintain the ratios determined by Chargoff
Who was awarded the Nobel prize for determining the structure of DNA?
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins
component of a nucleotide
nitrogenous base
phosphate
sugar