Molecular Genetics Misrepresentation

A very biased view of Joshua Lederberg, is that Joshua Ledererg is a founder of Molecular Biology (taken to mean, Molecular Genetics). This view may be found in the 1998 U. Wisconsin "Oral History" interview. Of course, any researcher engaged in genetics during roughly the first half of the twentieth century might be viewed as a founder of Molecular Genetics; perhaps even Gregor Mendel could also be counted among the founders of Molecular Genetics! However, if facts are not to be stretched beyond reality, saying that Joshua Lederberg was a founder of Molecular Genetics is simply incredible. An honest appraisal would find Joshua Lederberg as an important figure in Microbial Genetics, not Molecular Genetics. A brief view of some of the the major milestones of Molecular Genetics follows.

  1. 1944: Oswald Avery identifies nucleic acids as the active principle in bacterial transformation. Avery, O. T., C. M. MacLeod, and M. McCarty (1944). Studies on the Chemical Nature of Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Typoes. Induction of Transformation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III. Journal of Experimental Medicine 79: 137-158. Also in Peters (1959). Oswald Avery (1877-1955) was a bacteriologist whose research on pneumococcus bacteria made him one of the founders of immunochemistry and laid the foundation for later discoveries that launched the science of molecular genetics.
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  2. 1950: Erwin Chargaff shows that the four nucleotides are not present in nucleic acids in stable proportions, and that the nucleotide composition differs according to its biological source. Most importantly, that DNA from any cell of all organisms should have a 1:1 ratio of pyrimidine and purine bases and, more specifically, that the amount of guanine is equal to cytosine and the amount of adenine is equal to thymine.
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  3. 1952: The Alfred D. Hershey–Martha Chase experiments prove, on the basis of their bacteriophage research, that DNA alone carries genetic information.
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  4. 1952: James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick, Cambridge, UK, propose the double helix model for DNA molecule based on x-ray data obtained by Franklin and Wilkins (Nature, 171: 737-738, 1953).
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  5. Research in the 1950s by Arthur Kornberg, provides the final proof that DNA is self-replicating; thus, that it serves as the genetic material essential for the reproduction of living forms. Arthur Kornberg discovers the enzyme DNA polymerase, and demonstrates that it triggers template replication of the DNA molecule.
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  6. A very good example of the false claim that that Joshua Lederberg was a founder of Molecular Genetics (as opposed to microbial genetics) is available.
         Click here to see Joshua Lederberg: the "Molecular Geneticist".
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  7. Another false claim concerning Joshual Lederberg as a Molecular Geneticist is a plaque that makes such a false claim (of course, without foundation in fact, thus no supporting evidence). This false claim is further compounded by a second claim confusing the discovery of conjugation in bacteria with "genetic recombination" in general, such as Esther M. Lederberg's discoveries, specialized transduction, etc.
         Click here to see evidence of more false claims.
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  8. The last major step in Molecular Genetics was the beginning of Genetic Engineering, an area of research that Joshua Lederberg was never involved in (especially as Joshua Lederberg himself stated that he ceased doing active research by circa 1963 and Genetic Engineering really didn't start until 1972).