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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1996  > October  >
Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
DNA before Watson & Crick-The Pioneering Studies of J. M. Gulland and D. O. Jordan at Nottingham
Harold Booth and Michael J. Hey
Department of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Cover
October 1996
Vol. 73 No. 10
p. 928

Abstract
A description placed in a historical context, of the physico-chemical investigations of DNA carried out in the period 1940-1950 by a group at University College, Nottingham led by J.M.Gulland and D.O.Jordan. The isolation of a pure sample of DNA from calf thymus was followed by its analysis by potentiometric titrations and by measurements at variable pH of viscosity and streaming birefringence. Unlike the phosphoric acid groups, the primary amino and enolic hydroxyl groups could only be titrated after prior treatment with strong acid or strong base. The conclusion of Gulland and Jordan, that extremes of pH caused liberation of amino and enolic hydoxyl groups by disruption of hydrogen bonds between neighbouring polynucleotide chains, proved to be of considerable importance.

The article includes life histories of Gulland and Jordan, and reference to Linus Pauling's remarkable foresight during his Sir Jesse Boot Foundation Lecture delivered at Nottingham in 1948.

More Information
*  Citation
Booth, Harold; Hey, Michael J. J. Chem. Educ. 1996 73 928.
*  Keywords
History/Philosophy
*  History
Created:
Last Updated:
September 22, 1999
February 21, 2006
  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1996 > October > Page 928



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