8.1 How Was DNA’s Function Discovered?

• The substance we now call DNA was first

described in 1869 by Johannes Miescher
• Miescher determined that DNA is not a
protein, and that it is rich in nitrogen and
phosphorus
– He never learned of its function

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 How Was DNA’s Function Discovered?
(cont’d.)

• Sixty years after Miescher’s work,

Frederick Griffith unexpectedly uncovered
a clue about DNA’s function
– Heat destroyed the ability of lethal S bacteria
to cause pneumonia, but it did not destroy
their hereditary material
– The hereditary material could be transferred
from dead S cells to live R cells

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 How Was DNA’s A Griffith’s first experiment
Function showed that R cells were
Discovered? harmless. When injected into
(cont’d.) mice, the bacteria multiplied,
but the mice remained healthy.

B The second experiment

showed that an injection of
S cells caused mice to develop
fatal pneumonia. Their blood
contained live S cells.

C For a third experiment, Griffith killed

S cells with heat before injecting them
into mice. The mice remained healthy,
indicating that the heat-killed
S cells were harmless.

D In his fourth experiment, Griffith

injected a mixture of heat-killed S cells
and live R cells. To his surprise, the
mice became fatally ill, and their
© Cengage Learning 2015 blood contained live S cells.
 How Was DNA’s Function Discovered?
(cont’d.)

• In 1940, Oswald Avery and Maclyn

McCarty identified that the “transforming
principle” was a nucleic acid
– Lipid- and protein-destroying enzymes did not
block the S cell’s transformation of R cells
– DNA-degrading enzymes, but not RNA-
degrading enzymes, prevented transformation
– They concluded that DNA must be the
transforming principle

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 How Was DNA’s Function Discovered?
(cont’d.)

• Essential properties of hereditary material:

– A full complement of hereditary information
must be transmitted along with the molecule
– An equal amount of hereditary material must
be found in each cell of a given species
– The hereditary material must not change
– The hereditary material must be capable of
encoding the enormous amount of information
required to build a new individual

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 How Was DNA’s Function Discovered?
(cont’d.)

• In the late 1940s, Alfred Hershey and

Martha Chase established that DNA
transmits a full complement of hereditary
information
– They established that the material
bacteriophage (a virus that infects bacteria)
injects into bacteria is DNA, not protein

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 8.2 How Was DNA’s Structure Discovered?

• Building blocks of DNA

– DNA is a polymer of nucleotides, each with a
five-carbon sugar, three phosphate groups,
and one of four nitrogen-containing bases

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 Building Blocks of DNA (cont’d.)

• 1950: Erwin Chargaff made two important

discoveries about DNA
– Chargaff ’s first rule: the amounts of thymine
and adenine are identical, as are the amounts
of cytosine and guanine (A = T and G = C)
– Chargaff ’s second rule: DNA of different
species differs in its proportions of adenine
and guanine

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 Building Blocks of DNA (cont’d.)

• Structure of DNA helix:

– Two sugar–phosphate chains running in
opposite directions, and paired bases inside
– Bonds between the sugar of one nucleotide
and the phosphate of the next form the
backbone of each chain (or strand)

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 Building Blocks of DNA (cont’d.)

• Structure of DNA helix (cont’d.):

– Hydrogen bonds between the internally
positioned bases hold the two strands
together
– Only two kinds of base pairings form
(supports Chargaff ’s first rule):
• A to T
• G to C

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 DNA's Base Sequence

• The two strands of DNA match

– The strands are complementary: the base of
each nucleotide on one strand pairs with a
suitable partner base on the other
– The base-pairing patterns - A to T and G to C
- is the same in all molecules of DNA

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 DNA's Base Sequence (cont’d.)

one
base
pair

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 What Is a Chromosome? (cont’d.)

• Chromosome: structure that consists of

DNA and associated proteins
– Carries part or all of a cell’s genetic
information
• Histone: type of protein that structurally
organizes eukaryotic chromosomes
• Nucleosome: a length of DNA wound twice
around a spool of histone proteins

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 What Is a Chromosome? (cont’d.)

• During most of a cell’s life, each

chromosome consists of one DNA
molecule
• When the cell prepares to divide, it
duplicates its chromosomes by DNA
replication
– After replication, each chromosome consists
of two DNA molecules (sister chromatids) that
attach at a centromere region
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 Chromosome Number and Type (cont’d.)

• Human body cells have two sets of 23

chromosomes—two of each type
– Having two sets of chromosomes means
these cells are diploid
• Karyotype: an image of an individual’s
diploid set of chromosomes

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 Chromosome Number and Type (cont’d.)

• Autosome: a chromosome that is the

same in males and females
– Two autosomes of a pair have the same
length, shape, and centromere location
– They hold information about the same trait

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 8.4 How Does a Cell Copy Its DNA?

• In preparation for division, a cell copies its

chromosomes so that it contains two sets
– The process by which a cell copies its DNA is
called DNA replication

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 Semiconservative Replication

• Before DNA replication, a chromosome

consists of one molecule of DNA (one
double helix)
• As replication begins, enzymes break the
hydrogen bonds that hold the double helix
together
– The two DNA strands unwind and separate

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 Directional Synthesis (cont’d.)

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 8.5 What Causes Mutations?

• Mistakes can and do occur during DNA

replication
• Examples:
– The wrong base is added to a growing DNA
strand
– A nucleotide gets lost, or an extra one slips in

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 What Causes Mutations? (cont’d.)

• Most replication errors occur because

DNA polymerases work very fast
• Luckily, most DNA polymerases also
proofread their work
– They can correct a mismatch by reversing the
synthesis reaction to remove the mispaired
nucleotide

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 What Causes Mutations? (cont’d.)

• Replication errors may occur after a cell’s

DNA gets broken or damaged
– DNA polymerases do not copy damaged DNA
very well
• When proofreading and repair
mechanisms fail, an error becomes a
mutation
– A permanent change in the DNA sequence of
a cell’s chromosome
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 What Causes Mutations? (cont’d.)

• Mutations can form in any type of cell

– Those that occur during egg or sperm
formation can be passed to offspring
• Mutations that alter DNA’s instructions
may have a harmful or lethal outcome
– Most cancers begin with a mutation
• Not all mutations are dangerous
– Some give rise to variation in traits; basis for
evolution
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 8.6 How Does Cloning Work?

• Cloning: making an identical copy of

something
• Reproductive cloning: technology that
produces genetically identical individuals
– Example: artificial embryo splitting

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 How Does Cloning Work? (cont’d.)

• Animal breeders sometimes want an exact

copy of a specific individual
– Use a cloning method where a somatic cell is
taken from an adult organism (contains
master blueprint for new individual)
– An adult somatic cell will not start dividing to
produce an embryo because the cell has
already differentiated (obtained specialized
characteristics)

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 How Does Cloning Work? (cont’d.)

• Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) can

undifferentiate a somatic cell by turning its
unused DNA back on
– An unfertilized egg’s nucleus is replaced with
the nucleus of a donor’s somatic cell
– The egg’s cytoplasm reprograms the
transplanted DNA to direct the development of
an embryo, which is then implanted into a
surrogate mother

© Cengage Learning 2015