engleski

From DNA degradation to the genom and beyond

25th anniversary of Croatian biochemical society coincides with the 40th anniversary of our first papers on nucleic acid research (Miletić, Kućan et al; Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 4(1961)343 and 348). In my talk I will try to highlight the enormous conceptual and technical advantage made in only four decades. At that time genes are made of (several?) DNA molecules, while purines and pyrimidines were represented in wrong tautomeric forms! Degradation of DNA we found in irradiated bacteria was observed by simple spectroscopic measurement or radioactive labeling, and it took years to put it into a biological context. Ten years later we still needed micrograms or even milligrams of nucleic acids in order to undertake any serious experiments related to the reading of genetic code. A sudden change was brought by development of sequence analysis and molecular cloning, techniques used by many participants of this Meeting. However, some of our fundamental concepts changed even more than our technology did. Structure of genomic and molecular analysis of individual loci enabled us to go far beyond structural genes and to search for molecular bases of behavior and development.

genome

nije evidentirano