Gregor Mendel : The Father Of Genetics

Throughout the early 19th and 20th century, many scientists have studied deoxyribonucleic acids in order to attain higher understanding over the matter. Johann G. Mendel had figured out and understood the laws of heredity. Friedrich Miescher amazingly discovered DNA in 1869, even though scientists did not understand DNA was the genetic material

In Time Magazine an article states On February 28 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick broke the DNA code and discovered that the DNA strand is double helix and forms like a ladder. They found that cytosine and guanine were paired together and that adenine and thymine were paired. They discovered the building block of life (Wright, 1999). DNA is found in all living organisms.

Gregor Mendel, also know as the Father of genetics, was a monk who studied pea plants and discovered the laws of heredity. Heredity is the passing of traits from one generation to another. There are three laws and they are known as; the law of dominance, law of segregation, and the law of independent assortment.

In the 1950’s many scientists were trying to study and find the structure of DNA. Early before the 1950’s the work of pioneers had discovered DNA. Scientists began to wonder what else is the DNA made up of and what is it’s’ structure. Many competed to discover the DNA. It just so happens in 1953 two men succeeded in their goal.

The DNA saga started in 1869, when Swiss biochemist Friedrich Miescher isolated a new substance from the nuclei of white blood cells. Researchers were recently aware that cells were the basic unit of life and Miescher was interested in their chemical components. Each morning, he called at the local clinic to pick up dirty bandages, for in the days before antiseptics these were soaked in pus - a good source of white blood cells with their large nuclei. Adding alkali made the cell nuclei burst open, releasing their contents, from which Miescher extracted DNA (which he called nuclein).

The origins of DNA were first discovered during 1857 by Gregor Mendel the "Father of Genetics”, whom was performing an experiment of genetics with pea plants, and would provide a basic foundation towards DNA and Genetics. Friedrich Miescher and Richard Altmann in 1869 were also part of the first people to discover DNA. While testing some sperm of a salmon, they discover a strange substance that they would name as "nuclein", which is known as DNA. This new form of "nuclein" (DNA) would be found to only exist in chromosomes. Frederick Griffith, a researcher, found the basis on DNA, from a molecule inheritance experiment involving mice and two types of pneumonia. His findings were that, when virulent disease is heated up (to kill) and is

Discovered in 1953, by James Watson and Francis Crick’s, DNA “The chemical that encodes instructions for building and replicating almost all living things” (pbs.org). Although these two great scientists made this great discovery it didn’t just come out the blue. In 1943, another scientist named Oswald Avery, proved what had been known as DNA. He stated that “DNA, a nucleic acid, carries genetic information, but no one knew how it worked” (pbs.org). Two other people that were of great help and contributed to the discovery of DNA were, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. They were both studying DNA and they used X-ray diffraction as their main tool. They used this method to make shadow picture out of it. Franklin was a very shy girl that liked to keep to herself. Without her

From there the race was on to figure out how DNA was structured in the hopes of better understanding genetics. Many scientists wondered how such a small and simple molecule, especially compared to proteins, with such limited variation code store the instructions to make organisms as complex as us. At the beginning of this race a man by the name of Chargaff discovered something interesting about the nucleotides in DNA. He made a set of ratios that he notices in DNA from multiple organisms. Two scientists by the names of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins also helped in the effort toward understanding DNA by amassing large amounts of X-ray diffraction data. These two clues helped Watson and Crick to eventually win the race in discovering the 3-D structure of DNA with their double helix model. Once DNA was found to be a double helix

James Watson one of the most notorious biologist. He made the astonishing discovery of DNA, and how it was structured. It all started out on April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois. James Watson was born to James D. Watson Sr. and Jean Mitchell.

This DNA discovery began to develop as early as 1943 when Oswald Avery proved that DNA can carry genetic information (PBS, 2001). Many other scientists soon began to believe that DNA must have had a simple structure to store genetic information for making living organisms. By 1950, Crick and Watson were on a mission to figure out how DNA worked. The two together, combined their scientific backgrounds for 18 months and were able to establish that DNA had a complex structure, but was intriguingly simple enough to be the molecule of life (National Library of Medicine, 2015). During the same time in London, Franklin and Wilkins were also studying DNA, but by

Although DNA was initially observed by Frederich Miescher, a German biochemist near the end of the nineteenth century, the key to the structure of DNA was not discovered until almost a hundred years later. It was at that time that science realized the importance of DNA to the study of biology.

In 1953, two scientists named Watson and Crick made one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. They discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, which led scientists to be able to

The first person to begin discovering the complexities of DNA was Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk who lived in the 19th century. In 1865, Mendel was studying heredity in pea plants. For eight years, he grew over ten thousand pea plants, looking for patterns that would show him how certain traits were passed on from parent to child (DNA Learning Center, n.d.). After completing his research, Mendel postulated three laws to describe inheritance; they are: the Law of Dominance, the Law of Segregation, and the Law of Independent Assortment. These laws determine the likelihood of the child receiving a specific trait from the parents (Science Clarified, n.d.). Mendel’s discoveries where groundbreaking, especially since it was done prior to the discovery of genes and chromosomes.

Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is the molecule that is responsible for containing genetic information in living organisms and viruses. As Olby concisely describes, DNA was first discovered by Fritz Miescher, who found a substance in the nucleus of a cell that he named “nuclein” in 1869 (xix). From there, in 1919, Phoebus Levene researched this substance, and discovered that nucleins were more accurately described by the term, nucleic acids. Levene also discovered that DNA contains nucleobases- adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine- as well as a phosphate group and deoxyribose. Levene thought that these bases had a fixed order (77). Then, in 1927, Nikolai Koltsov proposed the function of DNA- that it contains inherited traits and can duplicate because it has two main backbones, one of which is used as a template for this duplication (117). The next step in understanding this new particle was to figure out its structure. William Astbury was the first to produce x-ray diffraction images of DNA and proposed a structure of DNA, where the base was a spring-like shape that contained the nucleobases in the loops (66). In the early 1950s, Pauling and Corey proposed a triple-stranded DNA structure, and Fraser proposed a triple helix structure.

Even though there were many contributing factors, one of the most important discoveries about DNA was made by Francis Crick and James Watson. Francis Crick was born in 1916, in Northampton, England. Early in his life, he studied physics but later turned to biology. He attended University in London and earned his Ph.D in molecular biology in 1954. James Watson was born April 26, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois. He enrolled in the University of Chicago when he was just 15 years old. He earned his Ph.D. when he was 22 by completing studies on bacteriophages.