Health and Medicine
99 Discovery of the Structure of DNA
Mary Hannah Rodgers
introduction
The discovery of the structure of DNA has lead to major accomplishments and medical advancements. Not only was the discovery essential to the progress of the field of genetics, but also impacted society and technology beneficially. The experiments done by Erwin Chargaff, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick led to the discovery of the structure of DNA and the beginning of modern genetics, which lead to a greater understanding of diseases in society like cancer and how to prevent them from invading communities and taking human lives.
Background
The understanding of genetics and DNA has increased in the past ten years due to increased technological advancement and scientific discoveries. However, in order for this to be possible, the foundation of genetics and the definition of DNA had to be established first. Genetics is the study of heredity and how organisms inherit information from one generation to the next.
At one point, there was uncertainty surrounding which molecule in an organism was responsible for passing information down to offspring. In 1928, Frederick Griffith discovered that DNA was the molecule that carries information for the cell to produce proteins and process different functions in the organism (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020).
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is defined as a macromolecule that carries information in the cell. The name deoxyribonucleic acid comes from the fact that DNA contains a deoxyribose sugar, named such because it is missing an oxygen, and is a nucleic acid macromolecule (Sinden, 2012). It is primarily located in the nucleus of cells and is made of 2 strands arranged in a double helix structure. These strands are antiparallel, with one strand running in the opposite direction of the other. Each strand is composed of a covalently linked phosphate sugar backbone and 4 different nitrogenous bases, cytosine, thymine, guanine, and adenine, that hydrogen bond to the other strand in the helix (Sinden, 2012). The order in which the 4 nitrogenous bases are arranged corresponds to different information in the cell (Sinden, 2012).
This is how we define and understand DNA currently, but this information wasn’t always accessible in society. It took multiple experiments done by multiple different scientists in order to discover this concept.
Before the 1900s, Aristotle and Gregor Mendel were the main scientists that contributed to the study of genetics and its impact on society. Aristotle postulated that heredity was based on information being passed down through semen and the mother’s …until the discoveries of Erwin Chargaff, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick in the 1900s, there was no knowledge of DNA, its structure, or function. blood. Mendel discovered the accepted model of inheritance for organisms using pea plants and the different traits they possessed (Sinden, 2012). However, until the discoveries