Experiment

What was the hypothesis

being tested?

What was the

experimental design?

Griffith

Genetic traits are heritable

and can be transferred
from one bacterial strain to
another.

Avery, McCarty,
MacLeod

The heritable substance is

RNA, protein, or DNA.

Hershey and Chase

The heritable substance is

DNA. (Many researchers
did not buy the results of
the Avery et al.
experiment)

Meselson and Stahl

DNA replication was

semi-conservative.

S:pathogenic
R: nonpathogenic
Dead S: nonpathogenic
Dead S+Live R:
pathogenic
Remove carbs and lipids
from dead S and treated in
the following ways:
DNase, RNase, proteinase.
Treated, dead S was mixed
with R and injected into
mice.
Bacteriophages were
grown in S35 to label
protein. Another
population of
bacteriophages was grown
in P32 to label DNA. The
phages were used to infect
bacteria and analyzed to
determine if they
contained P32 or S35
Bacteria were grown in
media containing N15,
then switched to media
containing N14. The
DNA presence of N15,
N14, or Hybrid N14-N15
DNA was determined by
differential centrifugation.

What conclusions did the

authors make based on
the experimental design?
R bacteria had been
transformed into
pathogenic S bacteria by a
heritable substance.
Only sample treated with
RNase or proteinase were
able to kill mice. Samples
treated with DNase did not
kill mice. Therefore DNA
is the transforming factor.
The infected bacteria
contained P32, not S35.
DNA was the genetic
material of the phage.

First round replication

showed all hybrid DNA.
Second round replication
showed some hybrid and
some N14 DNA.
DNA replication is semiconservative..

2.) Addressed in lecturewent through each rule and discussed the process/enzymes that are involved in
overcoming this rule.



3.) Cancer cells must be continue to divide if cancer/tumor growth will continue.
If the telomeres get too short, cells will stop dividing.
Therefore actively dividing cancer cells activate telomerase.

Telomerase contains and RNA portion and protein portion. The RNA serves as a template for the lengthening
the telomeres at the end of chromosomes. If you interfere with the RNA, there is no template for DNA
synthesis.

If you interfere with the protein portion telomerase you could affect polymerase activity (ability to from
phosphodiester bonds between new nucleotides) or prevent template or nucleotide binding.