Hershey Chase Experiment

The Hershey–Chase experiments were a series of experiments conducted in 1952[1] by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, which helped to confirm that DNA was the genetic material. While DNA had been known to biologists since 1869[2], a few scientists still assumed at the time that proteins carried the information for inheritance. In their experiments, Hershey and Chase showed that when bacteriophages, which are composed of DNA and protein, infect bacteria, their DNA enters the host bacterial cell, but most of their protein does not. Although the results were not conclusive, and Hershey and Chase were cautious in their interpretation, previous, contemporaneous and subsequent discoveries all served to prove that DNA is the hereditary material. Knowledge of DNA gained from these discoveries has applications in forensics, crime investigation and genealogy.

Hershey shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria for their “discoveries concerning the genetic structure of viruses.”