Alfred Day Hershey was an American bacteriologist and Nobel laureate who made significant contributions to the field of molecular biology. He was born on December 4, 1908, in Owosso, Michigan, United States, and passed away on May 22, 1997, in Syosset, New York, United States.
Hershey is best known for his groundbreaking experiments that helped confirm that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) carries genetic information. In the early 1950s, along with his research assistant Martha Chase, he conducted a series of experiments known as the Hershey-Chase experiments.
In these experiments, Hershey and Chase used a bacteriophage (a type of virus that infects bacteria) called T2 to investigate whether DNA or protein was the genetic material that was passed on to offspring during viral replication. They labeled the DNA of the bacteriophage with radioactive phosphorus-32 and labeled the protein coat of the virus with radioactive sulfur-35.
Through their experiments, Hershey and Chase demonstrated that when T2 phages infected bacterial cells, it was the DNA, not the protein, that was passed on to the next generation of viruses. This provided strong evidence that DNA is the genetic material responsible for the transmission of hereditary information.
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