Sublime

In a tragic coda to this early story of eugenics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was still enmeshed in the controversy over eugenics as recently as January 2019, this time through the disgraceful racist utterances of Nobel laureate James D. Watson, cofounder of the DNA double helix and one of the laboratory’s longtime fellows, whom they stripped of

Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, created viruses with radioactive tracers in their DNA. They allowed the viruses to infect E. coli and then pulled off their empty husks in a fast-spinning centrifuge.

With the protein experiment, we see that it had nothing to do with which amino acids the protein contained – all of the protein’s information was stored in its structure.

Avery searched for radioactivity and found it only within the bacteria, not the virus shells. Hershey and Chase then reversed the experiment, spiking the protein in the viruses with radioactive tracers. Once the viruses had infected E. coli, only the empty shells were radioactive. A decade after Avery’s experiment,

“Deoxyribonucleic acid,” I say. “It’s a molecular blueprint for all living things and it’s composed of nucleotides.” He squints at me, unsure of what to think. “Which are?” “Molecules.” I say. “And yeah, I know that a molecule is a bunch of atoms stuck together. DNA is a four-letter code. A. T. G. and C. Adenine, thymine, guanine, and cy…cy…” “Cyto

there was a single base-pair mutation in the same position. It was not in the coding region of the gene, where everyone else had been looking, but rather in the part of the gene called the “promoter”—because this part promotes transcription of the DNA into mRNA.

they wanted it to use the sequence of A, G, C, and U nucleotides to predict the correct 3D structure.

the cloverleaf was further folded on itself to give an L-shaped molecule.

Woese did his work years before scientists could easily read the sequence of RNA or DNA. So he and his colleagues did the next best thing: they sliced up Escherichia coli’s 16S rRNA with the help of a virus enzyme.