1. Griffith, Avery, Hershey & Chase, Pauling, and Watson and Crick
Discovery of DNA
Griffith, Avery, Hershey & Chase, Pauling, and Watson and Crick

2. Refresher Questions What is DNA? Big Questions:
And don’t say Code of Life…
What is it made of?
Big Questions:
How did we come across the idea of DNA anyway?
How did we find out that it was DNA that holds the genetic material and not proteins?

3. What Scientists Knew WHAT SCIENTISTS KNEW: DNA Components:
Through testing on extracted DNA samples, scientists understood the basic ingredients of DNA but NOT the structure.
Made of 4 different kinds of nucleotides. 
Protein Components
Large complex molecule made of 20 different amino acids (much variability)

4. DNA Nucleotides
Scientists at this point understood the chemical components of the DNA molecule (But not the structure!)
3 Basic Parts
5-carbon sugar (deoxyribose)
Phosphate group
Nitrogen Base (4 kinds)
Adenine
Guanine
Cytosine
Thymine 

5. Griffith: It has to be something
1928 A British scientist, Frederick Griffith, was working with 2 forms of the same bacteria S. pneumoniae. One form causes pneumonia in mammals while the other form doesn’t.
Smooth S. pneumoniae causes pneumonia
Rough S. pneumoniae does not cause pneumonia

6. The Experiment

7. Results Why is this important to the discovery of DNA?
Think about the last part of Griffith’s experiment- How did that last injection kill the mouse?
Griffith figured out it had to be “something” that altered the R strain of the bacteria but he didn’t know what that “something” was

8. Avery and Others: Go One Step Further
In 1944 Avery, MacLeod, and McCarthy used a process of elimination style experiment.
Avery was very interested in finding out what the “transforming agent” was that Griffith had discovered

9. The Experiment

10. Results If it isn’t RNA, Sugar Coat, or Proteins it has to be DNA.
DNA is responsible for transforming the bacteria
A lot of scientists were skeptical about this discovery due to how simple a molecule of DNA is.
Why would people think DNA is so simple?
DNA is only made up of 3 basic parts… proteins are made up of huge long complex chains of amino acids.

11. Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase
1952- Hershey and Chase devised an experiment to settle the battle of DNA vs. Protein even though we already had some knowledge from Avery
We know now that DNA is the genetic material, but before this experiment we didn’t know if it was DNA or protein
Used bacteriophages in experiments to determine what the genetic material would be

12. Bacteriophage….What? A virus that infects bacteria
So what?
What infects the bacteria?
DNA or Protein?
How are we supposed to tell?
Bacteriophage pic:

13. The Experiment

14. Results
After the solution was centrifuged down we were left with a bacteria pellet.
What do you think showed up in the pellet?
The radioactive phosphorous or the radioactive sulfur
Why?!
Does this support Avery’s findings?

15. The Structure of DNA How do you do a jigsaw puzzle?

16. What did Scientists Know?
DNA is the mode of inheritance
Made of nucleotides
4 different types
Race is on for the structure!!!

17. Recipe for DNA A sugar phosphate backbone A nitrogenous base Voila DNA
Notice the way it faces
Voila DNA

18. The Impossible Puzzle The quest to find the DNA structure is on
Chargaff’s Rule
%A = %T %C = %G
And this means what? How does this help realize the structure?

19. Rosalind Franklin
1951 she was hired by King’s College in London to work on improving their X-ray crystallography
X-ray crystallography can photograph shapes and structures of molecules
Her pictures helped to unravel the mystery of the DNA structure
To the right
to the left

20. Watson and Crick Discovered the shape of the DNA structure
With help from Rosalind Franklin and Chargaff
Watson and Crick deduced a lot of information from one of the pictures and through math, speculation, and chemistry they were able to come up with the “twisted ladder” idea.
What does this mean for science?
Did Watson and Crick deserve all the credit?
Fun Question: Why wasn’t Franklin included in the Nobel Prize winning work?

21. A T C G Nitrogenous Bases What is different between the two? Purines
Adenine and Guanine
Pyrimidines
Cytosine and Thymine
What is different between the two?

22. What do we know so far? 4 Nitrogenous Bases A phosphate sugar backbone
2 purine
2 pyrimidine
A phosphate sugar backbone
We know it’s a double helix structure
What holds everything together?
Think Chemistry!

23. Base Pairing and Bonding!
Who talked about %A=%T and that %C=%G?
What kind of bonds hold the nucleotides together?

24. DNA Replication the Beginning
In mitosis we talk about DNA replicating to make duplicated chromosomes
Now we get to find out how that DNA is copied and translated
Why is it important for us to understand DNA replication?
What about DNA’s structure is going to make it hard to replicate?
Think about which way the bases are facing

25. Basic Idea

26. Think about DNA’s Structure