What is DNA?
By: Emma and Chris
The History of DNA Timeline
1856-1863:
Gregor Mendel started his work on Pea Plants. He found that each plant has a different trait and that it was a born trait, each parent trait is present in the offspring.
- Friedrich Miescher started the first preparation of DNA and didn’t know that’s what it was. He called it Nuclein. He thought it was made of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus, and the ratio from nitrogen to phosphorus was very unique. Miescher discovered DNA and identified it.
- The next important person in the history of DNA is Thomas Hunt Morgan who came up with the Chromosomal Theory of Inheritance. Morgan and students developed the ideas, and provided proof of the chromosomal theory of heredity, genetic linkage, chromosomal crossing over and non-disjunction.
- James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel was a German scientist gained fame as the founder of the modern science of genetics from his work with pea plants.
Friedrich Miescher
Johannes Friedrich Miescher was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first researcher to isolate and identify nucleic acid.
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist and science author that won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for his discoveries showing the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.
DNA Networking and Properties
DNA is composed of two sides, or strands, that are twisted together to form a "double helix", that looks basically just like a twisted ladder. The sides of the ladder are the sugar-phosphate "backbone" adjacent nucleotides that are bonded together. The phosphate of one nucleotide is covalently bonded to the sugar of the next nucleotide. The hydrogen bonds between phosphates cause the DNA strand to twist. The nitrogenous basesform pairs with bases on the other side, like rungs. Each base pair is formed from two complementary nucleotides bound together by hydrogen bonds. The base pairs in DNA are adenine with thymine and cytosine with guanine.
It's Important Stuff!
DNA is important, because it has all the genetic information for literally every cell in your body! It's what separates us from every other animal and from one another. The discovery of DNA has also helped make huge advancements in the fields of disease diagnosis and treatment. Doctors and scientists can now map people's DNA sequences to determine which part is causing a disease, then use that information to treat them. DNA can also be used in crime scenes and cases of paternity.
Fun Facts
- If you unwrap all of the DNA in your body you could reach the moon 6000 times.
- 99% of our DNA sequences are the same as other people's.
- There are 3 Billion DNA bases in our Genome.
- It would take someone typing 60 words a minute, 8 hours a day, for 50 years to write out a human genome.
- DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid.