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A slip in the date of DNA's discovery

Nature volume 468, page 897 (2010)Cite this article

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In her review of Anna Ziegler's play Photograph 51, Josie Glausiusz refers to DNA's “discovery” in 1953 (Nature 468, 375; 2010), when this was in fact the year its structure was solved. The molecule itself was discovered almost a century earlier.

It was a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher, who stumbled on DNA in 1869, naming it nuclein. He realized that it chemically defines the nucleus — an enigmatic organelle at that time — and identified the molecule in a wide variety of cell types, including germ cells. He determined DNA's elementary composition and basic biochemical properties, and suggested that it could be important in cell proliferation, realizing it was synthesized before cell division.

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  1. Institute of Molecular Biology, Mainz, Germany

    Ralf Dahm

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  1. Ralf Dahm
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Dahm, R. A slip in the date of DNA's discovery. Nature 468, 897 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/468897d

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