Question

Describe the Hershy-Chase blender expirements. What did they show? What components were used to demonstrate this?

Answer 1

Ans:- Hershey and chase blender experiment showed that the DNA is a genetic material and it is transferred from one generation to others.

Hershey and chase took two bacteriophage.

They labeled one phage with radiolabelled Phosphorous means their DNA was labelled.

They labelled second phage with sulphur means their protein coat was labelled. Since bacteriophage contains only two components one is protein coat or capsid and other is DNA.

Now, two phages one phosphorus labelled and other sulphur labelled were separately infected to E.coli. So, once inside the E.coli these phages will make copy of itself. After that E.coli cells were lysed to do the analysis. They found the phage that was sulphur labelled or protein coat labelled there progeny do not contain any labelled protein coat and all of them are u labelled. Interestingly, when DNA labelled phage infected E.coli cells were lysed they observed that progeny contained labelled DNA. These experiments concluded that DNA is a genetic material not protein because DNA is transferred from one generation to other.

So, Sulphur labelled protein coat for one phage and phosphorus labelled DNA other phage was used to demonstrate the experiment. And I have breifely described it also.

Dear student if you find the answer convincing please do give the feedback.