Maclyn McCarty

Maclyn McCarty (June 9, 1911 – January 2, 2005) was an American geneticist. He was best known for proving that DNA, not protein, was the chemical basis of the gene.

Maclyn McCarty
Maclyn McCarty with Francis Crick and James Watson
Born	(1911-06-09)June 9, 1911 South Bend, Indiana
Died	January 2, 2005(2005-01-02) (aged 93)
Known for	Role in the discovery that DNA is the carrier of genes

McCarty devoted his life to studying infectious disease organisms. Studies of bacteria led the way to studying heredity through genetics and biochemistry. This started the age of molecular biology.

McCarty was the youngest and longest surviving member of the research team responsible for the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment. He won the Wolf Prize in Medicine for 1990. MacCarty died on January 2, 2005, from congestive heart failure.

The work

The phenomenon was first described in Griffith's experiment of 1928, which suggested DNA was the material of heredity. In this early experiment dead Streptococcus pneumoniae of the virulent strain type III-S, was injected along with living but non-virulent type II-R pneumococci. This resulted in a deadly infection of type III-S pneumococci. This meant the non-virulent strain had been transformed (changed) by something in the dead bacteria.

Work to prove DNA was responsible took many years, starting in 1928. Griffith's work was suggestive, but not sufficient. In their paper of 1944, Avery and his colleagues decided that DNA, rather than protein was the hereditary material of bacteria, and was analogous to genes and/or viruses in higher organisms.^[1][2]

This was epoch-making work, but the three men did not get the Nobel Prize. McCarty later explained the work for the general reader.^[3]