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Lecture 1A - One Gene-One Enzyme Hypothesis
Lecture 1A - One Gene-One Enzyme Hypothesis
✓ The one gene, one enzyme hypothesis is the idea that each gene encodes a single enzyme. Though, this
idea is generally not correct.
✓ Sir Archibald Garrod, a British medical doctor, was the first to suggest that genes were connected to
enzymes.
✓ Beadle and Tatum confirmed Garrod's hypothesis using genetic and biochemical studies of the bread
mold Neurospora.
✓ Beadle and Tatum identified bread mold mutants that were unable to make specific amino acids. In
each one, a mutation had "broken" an enzyme needed to build a certain amino acid.
✓ Typical gene provides instructions for building a protein, which in turn determines the observable
features of an organism.
✓ For instance, Gregor Mendel's flower color gene specifies a protein that helps make pigment molecules,
giving flowers a purple color when it works correctly.
✓ Mendel, however, did not know that genes (which he called "heritable factors") specified proteins and
other functional molecules. In fact, he didn't even speculate about how genes affected the observable
features of living organisms.
Conclusion-
✓ In this way, Beadle and Tatum linked many nutritional mutants to specific amino acid and vitamin
biosynthetic pathways.
✓ Their work produced a revolution in the study of genetics and showed that individual genes were
indeed connected to specific enzymes.