History and discovery timeline

Discovery of nucleic acids - Friedrich Miescher

1869

Isolated the genetic material from white blood cell nucleui. He noted it had an acidic nature and called it nuclein

Discovery of DNA components - Phoebus Levene

1910

Determined the components of DNA:
adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, deoxyribose phosphate
defined phosphatus-sugar base units called nucleotides.

Griffit's transformation experiment - Frederick Griffith

1928

Griffith used two strains of Streptococcus:
Type S: virulent (deadly)
Type R: non-virulent (harmless)

Avery, MacLeod and McCarty

1944

Determined the cause of the transformation in Griffith's experiment.
They took live R and heat-treated S and mixed it with one of two enzymes.

Counting Nucleobases

1952

Used paper chromatography and UV spectroscopy to examine the abundance of the nucleobases and he started to notice something VERY odd...

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1962

This prize was for Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.