George BeadleBorn 22 Oct 1903; died 9 Jun 1989 at age 85. George Wells Beadle was an American geneticist who helped found biochemical genetics when he showed that genes affect heredity genes act by regulating definite chemical events. He shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg. Beadle and Tatum succeeded in demonstrating that the body substances are synthesized in the individual cell step by step in long chains of chemical reactions, and that genes control these processes by individually regulating definite steps in the synthesis chain. This regulation takes place through formation by the gene of special enzymes. |
