Biochemical Genetics and Molecular Biology: The Contributions of George Beadle and Edward Tatum.

"Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora" (1941), by George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum

George Wells Beadle [7] and Edward Lawrie Tatum's 1941 article "Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora [8]" detailed their experiments on how genes [9] regulated chemical reactions, and how the chemical reactions in turn affected development in the organism. Beadle and Tatum experimented on Neurospora, a type of bread mold, and they concluded that mutations to genes [9] affected...

Neurospora: the organism behind the molecular revolution.

U NDER the title “Fifty Years Ago: The Neurospora Revolution,” HOROWITZ (1 99 1) has celebrated an anniversary of the epochal 1941 paper of BEADLE and TATUM, which reported the first mutants with biochemically defined nutritional requirements. HOROWITZ’S account and others (HOROWITZ 1973, 1985, 1990; LEDERBERC 1990) have focused on the people who were involved, the genesis of their ideas, and t...

Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora.

One gene, one enzyme. What a simple concept, how obvious! This fundamental relationship between gene and gene product, hinted at by several previous investigators, did not become firmly established until George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum performed their pioneering analyses with Neurospora crassa. Prior to their proposing the one-gene–oneenzyme hypothesis, in the early 1940s, there was little...

The dawning of molecular genetics.

I n February 1944, I was shuttling between service as a hospital corpsman at a US Naval Hospital and the completion of my pre-medical studies at Columbia College in New York. I was just short of 19, and in uniform in the Navy V-12 officers’ training program. At Columbia, as an undergraduate I had already worked for two years in the laboratory of Francis J. Ryan, among the first of the league of...

GENETICS: TATUMAND BEADLE GENETIC CONTROL OF BIOCHEMICAL REACTIONS IN NEURO- SPORA: AN "AMINOBENZOICLESS" MUTANT* By