a history of "the most beautiful experiment in biology" /
Frederic Lawrence Holmes.
New Haven, CT :
Yale University Press,
2001.
1 online resource (xii, 503 pages) :
illustrations
Includes bibliographical references (pages 449-496) and index.
Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The Replication Problem -- Meselson and Stahl -- Twists and Turns -- Crossing Fields: Chemical Bonds to Biological Mutants -- Dense Solutions -- The Big Machine -- Working at High Speed -- The Unseen Band -- One Discovery, Three Stories -- An Extremely Beautiful Experiment -- Centrifugal Forces -- The Subunits of Semiconservative Replication -- Images of an Experiment -- Afterword -- Abbreviations Used in Notes -- Notes -- Index
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In 1957 Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl produced a landmark experiment confirming that DNA replicates as predicted by the double helix structure Watson and Crick had recently proposed. It also gained immediate renown as a 'most beautiful' experiment whose beauty was tied to its simplicity. This book vividly reconstructs the complex route that led to the Meselson-Stahl experiment and provides an inside view of day-to-day scientific research - its unpredictability, excitement, intellectual challenge, and serendipitous windfalls, as well as its frustrations, unexpected diversions away from original plans, and chronic uncertainty.