Assignment 3 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Assignment 3 - Essay Example Averys work is the springboard for everything from recombinant DNA work to human cloning to cancer research. It has been used as a basis for other experiments that do not merely change the host genetic makeup, but actually replace one gene with another gene, and this process has even further widened the implication of Averys work. Drug resistant bacterial infections have been stemmed in part because of the processes used by Avery, in which injurious agents are introduced into the drug resistant strains, and these injurious changes are passed down through the progeny. The implications of this work for every aspect of life, from the environment to medicine to crop engineering is explored within the confines of this paper. The basis for the studies were previous studies that induced changes in higher organisms that were permanently embedded and passed on to next generations as hereditary characteristics. The first description of this phenomenon is by Griffith, who transformed variant that was non-encapsulated and attenuated into a fully encapsulated and virulent cells of another type (Avery, et al., 1943, p. 137). The present study deals with an attempt to determine the chemical nature of a substance that produces transformation of the pneumococcal types. This experiment, in which a DNA fraction, which is isolated from Type III pneumococci, transforms unencapsulated R variants, which are derivated from Pneumococcus Type II, into a fully encapsulated Type III cells, builds upon earlier studies that showed that changes induced into various pneumococcal types is determined by the encapsulated cells that are used to evoke the reaction (Avery, et al., 1943, p. 152). The researchers found it striking that variants from a Pneumococcus Type II are changed into Pneumococcus Type III cells by the addition of highly purified and protein-free material that consisted mainly of DNA. Also striking is that the capsular substance and the substance