Monday 2 May 2011

BASIC RESEARCH ON DNA

Gregor Mendel
 ~~>  Gregor Mendel the "Father of Genetics" performed an experiement in 1857 that led to increased interest in the study of genetics. Mendel who became a monk of the Roman Catholic church in 1843, studied at the University of Vienna where he mastered arithmetic, & then later performed lots of scientific experiments. The greatest experiment that Mendel performed involved growing thousands of pea plants for 8 years. He was made to give up his experiment when he became abbot of the monastery because of the political issues of the time. He died in 1884, but has been recalled for the great contribution to science that he made. To learn about his experiment & what it led to read: Genetics.

Frederick Griffith
 ~~>  In 1928 a scientist named Frederick Griffith was working on a project that enabled others to point out that DNA was the molecule of inheritance. Griffith's experiment involved mice & types of pneumonia, a virulent as well as a non-virulent kind. He injected the virulent pneumonia in to a mouse & the mouse died. Next he injected the non-virulent pneumonia in to a mouse & the mouse continued to live. After this, he heated up the virulent disease to kill it & then injected it in to a mouse. The mouse lived on. Last he injected non-virulent pneumonia & virulent pneumonia, that had been heated & killed, in to a mouse. This mouse died.
  •   Why? Griffith thought that the killed virulent bacteria had passed on a characteristic to the non-virulent to make it virulent. He thought that this characteristic was in the inheritance molecule. This passing on of the inheritance molecule was what he called transformation.

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