DNA & its discovery |club 5050 |

DNA -

what is it in simple words and how is it arranged? Physically, this is a macromolecule that not only stores hereditary information, but is also a detailed instruction for the development of the whole organism conditionally from one universal cell.

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If we compare man with a computer, and the whole variety of biological life with various forms of robotic computers, DNA in this comparison will be a biological programming language. The only difference is that biological species are much more complex and more perfect than the most advanced computers.

For example, all biological species have the unique ability to divide and transform cells. In fact, during the self-reproduction of the cell, the biomass not only materializes from itself, but is also physically transformed to solve many highly specialized tasks. And all the diversity of living species, their forms, unique abilities comes from the division of one universal cell. This alone already goes far beyond all modern genetic achievements.

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Discovery history

In fact, the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid occurred twice. The intial discovery of the DNA was made by Johann Friedrich Miescher in The year 1869. Being a Swiss biologist and physiologist, he was able to isolate a large molecule with a high content of nitrogen and phosphorus from cells contained in pus. He intially called this discovery nuclein, and later on - nucleic acid, when its acidic properties was discovered.

Johann Friedrich Miescher

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Initially, scientists believed that the main function of the nucleic acid was to store phosphorus. And the assumptions that it may contain hereditary information caused ridicule, since the structure of the molecule seemed to them too simple and monotonous for such functions. It was also believed that the presence of deoxyribonucleic acid is characteristic only of animal cells, while plants contain only RNA. But in 1934–1935, Soviet biologists A. N. Belozersky and A. R. Kizel refuted this and published another results of their work in the Soviet and world scientific journals.

The rediscovery of DNA as a the sole carrier of hereditary traits was accomplished in 1944. A group of researchers, consisting of Oswald Avery, Colin Macleod and Maclean McCarthy, conducted experiments with the transformation of bacteria and proved that deoxyribonucleic acid plays a major role in this process.

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Importance of DNA in medicine

The discovery of DNA in medicine, the decoding of this acid are events whose significance is difficult to exaggerate. Most of the modern breakthrough technologies and research are directly or indirectly based on this fundamental scientific discovery. If genes were not known, there would never be many modern forms of treatment & diagnostics, many technical creations. In fact, genetics as a full fledged science would not exist. The study of the cell and how it functions would stall. And without this knowledge, many discoveries in this area would not be possible.

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Today, knowledge about genes helps many people:

• Finding out your genetics is easy - all you need to do is to do a DNA analysis. With it, you can understand what diseases you have a predisposition to, or, for example, how you should eat, which vitamins you just need to include in your diet, and which substances, on the contrary, need to be limited, and even determine what kind of sport you should study.

• Find your loved ones and relatives. Find out more about your family

• Thanks to the discovery of the carrier of hereditary information, medicine has a chance to overcome hereditary diseases that previously seemed incurable.

• It is quite possible that it is thanks to this discovery that humanity will solve the problem of many millennia and find the elixir of immortality or a pill for all diseases.