BIOL 1107 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Norman Horowitz, Edward Tatum, George Beadle
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15. 1 the connection between dna, rna, and protein. George beadle, edward tatum (1940s) used a genetic approach to study metabolism in neurospora. Minimal medium (mm): growth medium containing minimal ingredients that enable a nonmutant crassa (orange bread mold, haploid fungus with simple nutritional needs) organism, such as e. coli or n. crassa, to grow. Inorganic salts, carbon source such as sucrose, vitamin biotin. Beadle and tatum hypothesized that neurospora used the materials in the mm to synthesize the more complex materials needed (like amino acids) for reproduction. Auxotroph: mutant strain that requires a nutrient supplement for its growth that is not needed by the. Beadle and tatum exposed wild-type neurospora to x-rays (mutagen, agent that causes mutations) and wild-type strain plated the mutagenized spores on a complete medium (cm) that contained compounds that neurospora synthesized from mm components. Carried out a genetic screen- technique to search through the mutagenized population of organisms to find individuals with the mutant phenotypes of interest.
