Rosalind Franklin And The Structure Of Dna

From Mendel’s work at the turn of the 20th century, many scientists began to slowly unravel the mysteries of how inheritance worked through genetic mapping. During the 1940’s, microbial genetics was established as a field of research, and DNA’s role as a genetic material was discovered. Using bacteria, scientists were able to better understand how gene transfer worked within organisms. In the 1950’s, the discovery of the structure of DNA by Rosalind Franklin helped to advance the field even more. Though often attributed to Watson and Crick (due to sexism in the field of science), Franklin was the one who laid the groundwork for their discovery, and had it not been for her research, the findings of Watson and Crick would never have been verified. Franklin’s discovery allowed for the genetic code to be deciphered, removing even more mystery from the makeup of organisms.

However, this stagnation began to be alleviated during the end of the 1960s. The enzyme DNA ligase was isolated in 1967, which is able to join two strands of DNA together. Three years later, in 1970, the first restriction enzyme was isolated, which was a major milestone in the advancement of genetic engineering. Since these enzymes act as scissors, they can be used to cut one strand of DNA into two separate pieces that can be attached to other pieces of DNA. These tools were used to create the first recombinant strand of DNA in 1972 at Stanford University in California. This led to the creation of single cells that could reproduce by themselves from the creation of new DNA, opening the door to genetically modified