LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Oswald Avery
built 185 days ago
Griffith’s colleague, Oswald Avery, conducted a 10-year study to identify the transforming factor. His experiments found that neither proteins nor RNA carry genetic information. He then wondered if DNA was the “transforming agent.” To answer this question, he conducted an experiment. In it, he destroyed the DNA in the first bacteria. When the DNA was destroyed, no hereditary information was transmitted to the second bacteria. Avery then concluded that DNA causes changes in the second bacteria by transmitting traits from the first bacteria.
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Canadian-born scientists Oswald Avery and Colin MacLeod spent their early years as scientists in Nova Scotia , where they were born. They met in New York , where, together with American scientist Maclyn McCarty, they painstakingly isolated components of pneumococci ( Streptococcus pneumoniae ) for over a decade before identifying DNA as the transforming principle. You can find more information on this classic experiment in an animation by accessing the Nelson science Web site.
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Oswald Avery was born in 1877 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father was a Baptist minister, and when Oswald was ten, his father became the pastor at the Mariners' Temple in New York's Lower East Side. Avery's parents were strong, enterprising people. They managed quite well on a small pastoral salary in the midst of one of the most crowded and squalid areas of New York City. They received occasional monetary donations from John D. Rockefeller, the rich industrial, who was an active supporter of the Baptist Church.
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As a young boy, Avery learned how to play the cornet and on Sunday afternoons would play to attract worshippers to the church. He was so good that he won a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music. In 1893, Avery attended the Colgate Academy and later the Colgate University. He became the leader of the college band and acquired the nickname "Babe" because of his small stature.
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As for Avery, "He was not bitter or unhappy," says Hollingsworth. "He was an amazing man, very remarkable. When he was awarded the Copley Medal (from the Royal Society in London), he didn't even go to London."
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A pesquisa de Avery centrou-se na bactéria que provoca a pneumonia. A bactéria pneumococo tem duas formas: uma estirpe viral coberta por um invólucro, ou cápsula lisa, e outra não infecciosa que não possui cápsula e tem uma aparência rugosa. Experiências conduzidas pelo microbiólogo inglês Frederick Grifith haviam demonstrado que quando um extracto morto da estirpe lisa era misturado com a estirpe rugosa viva e injectada num rato, os tecidos do animal passavam a conter uma estirpe viva e lisa. A maioria dos cientistas teorizava que a mudança deveria ser provocada por uma proteína mas, após repetir a experiência muitas vezes, entre 1932 e 1944, Avery provou que era o Ácido Desoxirribonucleico (ADN) o responsável pela transferência de material genético entre células num processo chamado "transformação". A descoberta sugeria que o ADN seria o material genético básico da célula, facto que veio a ser confirmado por cientistas posteriores. O trabalho de Avery inspirou várias pesquisas sobre a estrutura do ADN, agora conhecida como código genético.
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Oswald Avery