Hello!
Six people who have made contributions to the fields of genetics are:
Gregor Mendel: He was a monk from the Austrian Empire. He is considered the father of genetics. His contribution was to formulate the Mendel Laws that originate the discipline of genetical heritage, from his experiments with pea plants in which he studied seven different traits and classified them as dominant or recessive, tracking how they were transmitted from one generation to the next.
Charles Darwin: Was an English naturalist. He formulated the theory of Evolution from the mechanisms of natural selection. He postulated that random favorable genetic traits that allowed individuals to survive were transmitted to their offspring, disproving the previous theory from Lamarck which stated that the environment shapes evolution.
Erwin Chargaff: He was an Austrian chemist who discovered the rule that helped in the discovery of the DNA double helix. He enunciated the Chargaff Law, which tells that the amount of Adenine is equal to the amount of Thymine and that the amount of Guanine is equal to the amount of Cytosine on both strands of DNA. This helped to set the rule of base complementarity.
Rosalind Franklin: She was an English chemist who was never recognized in life for her crucial discoveries that helped to propose the DNA structure. Franklin was the first to describe the fact that phosphate units were located in the outside part of DNA, which is important to describe its molecular stability. She captured an X-Ray picture of DNA that was the fundamental evidence over which the double helix structure of DNA was proved (this picture is called Photo 51).
Francis Crick: He was part of a team of biologists with James D. Watson who discovered the double helix molecular structure of DNA, which is key to understand genetic mechanisms. Crick established the central dogma of molecular biology which states that genetic information can pass from DNA and RNA to proteins but not from proteins to DNA or RNA.
Francis Collins: He is an American geneticist who is the leader of the Human Genome Project. This project was looking to elucidate the entire DNA sequence of the 23 chromosome pairs in human cells. This goal was achieved in 2003, but now the challenge is to know how the information stored in human DNA is used to produce all proteins in the body.
Have a nice day!
