In the mid-20th century, the field of microbiology was rapidly developing. The identification of DNA as the code of life was critical for understanding both how individuals inherit traits from their parents, and how evolution occurs. Scientists were eager to study the content of DNA in different organisms and compare them. However, they faced a major problem, DNA was incredibly hard to isolate! The only method available to extract the genes they were interested in was painstaking and took lots of time. It took a combination of innovation from several different people to solve this issue.
The Building Blocks
Since the extraction of genes was often a bottleneck to microbiologists, a quicker method was desperately needed. Eventually it came, but there were several developments leading up to this solution. First, scientists needed to figure out how DNA was replicated in a cell. This was accomplisted by Arthur Kornberg in the 1950’s and he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. He discovered the enzymes that work to copy DNA in our cells: DNA Polymerase. The method he used turned out to be incredibly complicated and was difficult to reproduce, but it was an important step.
