All Writings

In 1977, British biochemist Frederick Sanger invented dideoxynucleotide chain-termination DNA sequencing, cracking open the chemical text of life. By deciphering the complete...

Working in solitary brilliance at Cold Spring Harbor, Barbara McClintock studied the kaleidoscopic variegation of maize kernels to shatter the dogma of...

At the Pasteur Institute in Paris, François Jacob and Jacques Monod discovered the lac operon of Escherichia coli, proving that the genome...

In August 1961, young biochemist Marshall Nirenberg electrified the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow by announcing that synthetic poly-U directed the...

With the architecture of the double helix established, Francis Crick formulated the supreme theoretical charter of modern molecular biology: The Central Dogma...

In late 1952 and early 1953, the race to uncover the three-dimensional architecture of DNA culminated in Cambridge and London. Rosalind Franklin’s...

In the summer of 1952 at Cold Spring Harbor, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase used an ordinary kitchen Waring blender and radioactive...

In 1928, British medical officer Frederick Griffith discovered that heat-killed virulent pneumonia bacteria could mysteriously transform harmless live bacteria into deadly killers....

Inside Columbia University’s crowded 'Fly Room', Thomas Hunt Morgan and his brilliant students utilized the common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to prove...

In the secluded monastery garden of St. Thomas in Brno, Gregor Mendel cultivated 28,000 pea plants to resolve the mystery of heredity....