For more than 50 years after the science of genetics was established and the patterns of inheritance through genes were clarified, the largest questions remained unanswered: How are the chromosomes and their genes copied so exactly from cell to cell, and how do they direct the structure and behavior of living things? This paper will discuss those questions and the people that answered them.
Two American geneticists, George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum, provided one of the first important clues in the early 1940s. Working with the fungi Neurospora and Penicillium, they found that “genes direct the formation of enzymes through the units of which they are composed.” (Annas 1996) A specific gene produces each unit (a polypeptide). Th
|
This is only the first few lines of this paper. If you would like to view the entire paper you need to register here.
|
Get Instant Access to 100,000 Essays!!
|
|