Chapter 16

30/10/2011 03:21:00

1953 James Watson and francis Crick were the first to proposed the double helical model for DNA 16.1 Federick Griffith was the one who found that DNA can transform bacteria o o Studied pneumonia bacteria in mammals Transformation is a change in geno and phenotype due to the assimilation of external DNA

Oswald Avery used griffiths experiment o He found that DNA was transforming agent, but people were skeptical that it would hold true in mammals (the experiment was in bacteria)

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase o o They found that DNA is the transforming agent in griffiths work It was a land mark experiment because it was evidence that nucleic acid, not proteins, were hereditary material at least for viruses

Erwin Chargaff o Found more evidence proving that nucleic acids were hereditary material

Watson and Crick o o o o Used X-ray diffraction image of DNA, which showed were the x-rays were deflected by molecules The x-ray diffraction photo told them that DNA was helical shape and width of the helix Also found that the helix was made of two DNA strands instead of the 3 proposed by Linus Pauling Found the base pairings: A+T amd C+G by trial and error

16.2: DNA replication o Watson and Crick backed the semiconservative model Semiconservative model said that daughter DNA will have one old strand and one new DNA replication starts at the origins of replication Its a short stretch of DNA that has a specific sequence of nucleotides Proteins recognize this sequence and initiate the DNA replication They attach to the DNA and separate to the 2 strands Then copy the whole molecule

In eurkaryotic chromosomes there thousands of replication origins At the end of each replication bubble is a replication fork It is where the parental strands of DNA are being unwound Helicases are enzymes that untwist the double helix Single strand binding proteins bind to the unpaired DNA strands and stabilizes them Primer is an RNA chain which is intially produced during DNA synthesis Primer is produced by the enzyme primase

DNA polymerase catalyze the synthesis of new DNA by adding nucleotides to a preexisting chain DNA polymerase 1 and 3 play a big role in DNA replication Most polymerases require a primer and a DNA template strand