Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
†
composition of DNA or its role in the makeup of genes. The idea that
genes are independent and heritable is usually traced to the studies
of the Czech monk, Gregor Mendel, who demonstrated that phenotypic
traits are inherited in his studies of peas in 1866. Soon afterwards (1868),
Friedrich Miescher isolated a new substance that was neither protein nor
sugar from the nucleus of cells which he called nucleic acid. However,
the link between nucleic acid and genetic makeup was not made un-
til the landmark publication by Oswald Avery and his colleagues, Colin
MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, in 1944 (10). In this paper, they showed
for the first time that hereditable traits could be transferred using purified
Search WWH ::
Custom Search