10.1 Using microbiology to discover the secrets of life

Learning objectives

• Describe the discovery of nucleic acid and nucleotides
• Explain the historical experiments that led to the characterization of DNA
• Describe how microbiology and microorganisms have been used to discover the biochemistry of genes
• Explain how scientists established the link between DNA and heredity

Through the early 20th century, DNA was not yet recognized as the genetic material responsible for heredity , the passage of traits from one generation to the next. In fact, much of the research was dismissed until the mid-20th century. The scientific community believed, incorrectly, that the process of inheritance involved a blending of parental traits that produced an intermediate physical appearance in offspring; this hypothetical process appeared to be correct because of what we know now as continuous variation, which results from the action of many genes to determine a particular characteristic, like human height. Offspring appear to be a “blend” of their parents’ traits when we look at characteristics that exhibit continuous variation. The blending theory of inheritance asserted that the original parental traits were lost or absorbed by the blending in the offspring, but we now know that this is not the case.

Two separate lines of research, begun in the mid to late 1800s, ultimately led to the discovery and characterization of DNA and the foundations of genetics, the science of heredity. These lines of research began to converge in the 1920s, and research using microbial systems ultimately resulted in significant contributions to elucidating the molecular basis of genetics .

Discovery and characterization of dna

Modern understanding of DNA has evolved from the discovery of nucleic acid to the development of the double-helix model. In the 1860s, Friedrich Miescher (1844–1895), a physician by profession, was the first person to isolate phosphorus-rich chemicals from leukocytes (white blood cells) from the pus on used bandages from a local surgical clinic. He named these chemicals (which would eventually be known as RNA and DNA) “ nuclein ” because they were isolated from the nuclei of the cells. His student Richard Altmann (1852–1900) subsequently termed it “ nucleic acid ” 20 years later when he discovered the acidic nature of nuclein. In the last two decades of the 19th century, German biochemist Albrecht Kossel (1853–1927) isolated and characterized the five different nucleotide bases composing nucleic acid. These are adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine (in DNA), and uracil (in RNA). Kossell received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for his work on nucleic acids and for his considerable work on proteins, including the discovery of histidine .