Pneumococcal Transformation : Genes are Made of DNA Richard

Copyright 2009, American Society for Investigative Pathology 29 The finding that DNA transmits heredity is considered by many to be the most important discovery in biology during the 20th century. Amazingly, the reception given the publication by Avery and colleagues announcing their discovery hardly fit such a fundamental advance. To a surprising degree the publication went unnoticed. The article appeared at the height of the Second World War ⎯ a time of hampered communication within the international scientific community ⎯ and in a journal not considered a main line periodical for geneticists and general biologists. The paper by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty did catch the attention of some biochemists who generally greeted it with skepticism. The claim that genes are made of DNA challenged the established dogma that proteins were the carriers of genetic information. Almost a decade passed before the discovery by Avery and his colleagues became widely known and acknowledged as a sentinel event in genetics.