Sono trascorsi 150 anni da quando il biologo svizzero Friedrich Miescher isolò per la prima volta gli acidi nucleici, aprendo la strada all'identificazione del DNA quale molecola responsabile dei caratteri ereditari.
Nel 1869, lavorando nei laboratori di Felix Hoppe-Seyler a Tubinga (Baden-Württemberg), scoprì vari composti chimici ricchi in fosfato all'interno dei nuclei dei leucociti (globuli bianchi). L'importanza della scoperta di tali molecole che denominò "nucleina", pubblicata nel 1871, non fu immediatamente chiara. Solo più tardi il biologo Albrecht Kossel proseguì lo studio investigando più nel dettaglio le strutture chimiche.
Bisognerà aspettare fino al 1944 affinché gli scienziati statunitensi Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty e Colin MacLeod riuscirono a dimostrare che il DNA (e non le proteine come era stato ipotizzato in precedenza) è il portatore dell'informazione genetica. Solo nel 1953 James Watson e Francis Crick decodificarono la struttura a doppia elica del DNA.
ATS/Swing
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