Molecular biology
Field · 1930s onward; decisive results from 1953 · Biology, stage 2: Map the fields
Molecular biology explains biological processes in terms of the molecules that carry them out, above all DNA, RNA, and protein. Its founding result was the double-helix structure of DNA, published in 1953 on the basis of X-ray diffraction data produced by Rosalind Franklin, which made the copying mechanism obvious from the structure itself. The field then worked out how sequence is transcribed, translated, and regulated, and it supplied the techniques the rest of biology now runs on.
What it claims
- Heredity is carried by a sequence of bases in DNA, and the structure of DNA explains how that sequence is copied.
- Sequence information flows from nucleic acid to protein and not back out of protein.
- Which genes a cell expresses, not which genes it has, accounts for the differences between its cell types.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Molecular biology Wikipedia
- Molecular Biology Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Molecular Biology of the Cell NCBI Bookshelf
