Lab Report: DNA
Virtual Component
Answer in full sentences below.
What is DNA?
What do the letters stand for?
What is it composed of?
Where is it found?
What is it shaped like?
Part 1
Directions: Go to the DNA Interactive website. Click on the “Timeline” link
on the left side of the page. Visit the above website, read a scientist’s
biography, watch an interview, or work through an experiment to identify
scientists, dates, events, and facts that makeup the major advances (so far)
in the science of DNA. List the answer after each of the descriptions below.
You may need to do some research beyond the DNA Interactive website.
1. It took him eight years and more than 10,000 pea plants to discover the
laws of inheritance:
2. Even though he added an extra strand to the structure of DNA, he
ultimately won two Nobel Prizes: the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the
Nobel Peace Prize:
3. These two scientists used a common kitchen appliance to help show that
phage DNA carries instructions to make new viruses:
4. Next time you’re munching away at the movies, think of this Nobel-Prize
winning scientist who figured out the process of transposition in corn
chromosomes:
5. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for their model of the structure of DNA in this year:
6. This scientist found that some viruses have an RNA-dependent DNA
polymerase that was later named “reverse transcriptase.” He was one of
three who shared in the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine:
7. J. Craig Venter’s company, Celera Genomics, worked on this very
important project:
8. Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl invented this new technique in their
quest to prove that DNA replication is semi-conservative:
9. This scientist first isolated DNA using pus collected from bandages at a
local hospital. Since white blood cells are a major component of pus, they
were their source of DNA:
10. The “fly room” at Columbia University was established through this
scientist’s efforts:
11. This scientist showed that RNA could act as its own catalyst. Because of
their work, it is no longer correct to state, “all enzymes are proteins”:
12. According to Chargraff, this hypothesis was incorrect. What evidence did
Chargraff use to refute what previous ideas?
13. List the Nobel Prize winners involved in DNA research and give a brief
overview of their work.
Part 2
Directions: Go to the DNA Interactive website. Click on the “Code” link on
the left side of the page. Choose the module, “Find the Structure”. At the
top of this page, click on “problem”. As you work through the problem
section, write, in your own words, the specific contribution that each
scientist made to the DNA story in the spaces provided below.
Scientist
Friedrich Miescher
Phoebus Levene
Oswald Avery
Contribution
Part 3
Directions: Go to the DNA Interactive website. Click on the “Code” link on
the left side of the page. Choose the module, “Find the Structure”. At the
top of this page, click on “players”. View and listen to the videos and read
the text at the site listed above. Write, in your own words, the specific
contribution that each scientist made to the DNA story in the spaces
provided below.
Scientist
Francis Crick
Erwin Chargaff
Rosalind Franklin
Contribution
Linus Pauling
Maurice Wilkins
James Watson
Answer the following questions, referring back to the materials you viewed above
or using other resources. Be sure to properly cite any resources beyond the DNA
Interactive website.
1. Watson and Crick knew that the triple helix model of DNA that Linus
Pauling had proposed was incorrect. What evidence did they have for
such a conclusion?
2. The work of Rosalind Franklin provided a key piece of data for Watson
and Crick’s model of DNA. Summarize that evidence and how it was
pivotal to the correct model being built. Explain why Franklin did not
originally receive the recognition for her work.