MO640 - Exercises - Antedisciplinary Science, Eddy (2005)

Exercises marked with (*) require further reading/search beyond the suggested texts.

8. (*) Who were Max Delbrueck and Erwin Chargaff?

Answer:

Max Delbrueck (1906-1981): Physicist-turned-biologist Max Delbrück developed a one-step process for quickly breeding bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). In collaboration with Salvador E. Luria, Delbrück showed that after a bacterium has been infected, it can undergo spontaneous mutations that give it immunity to the bacteriophage. Working separately, experiments conducted by both Delbrück and Alfred D. Hershey showed that genetic material from different kinds of viruses can mingle and produce new types of viruses.

Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002): Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist and author. He received a doctorate in chemistry in 1928. Discovered key facts, known as Chargaff's Rules, udeful in determining the structure of DNA:

The number of adenine (A) residues always equals the number of thymine (T) residues;
The number of guanine (G) residues always equals the number of cytosine (C) residues;

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