Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Linus was an American theoretical physical chemist who became the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes.
Linus is still recognized by the Oregon State University as having been the "most visible, vocal, and accessible American scientist".
His legacy lived on in his work creating an introductory textbook General Chemistry, in 1947 that has since been revised and translated to be used by generations of students and more to come. His work in the chemistry field began in the 20s and went on to be considered "the founding father of molecular biology.".
But, what did he do? What was is contribution to the science field, and to the history of DNA?
While Linus can coined for work in many areas of science, his contribution to the history of DNA can be boiled down to his proposal of the alpha helix and beta sheet.
Linus conducted his experiment in 1948 when he was a visiting lecturer at Oxford University. This experiment was essentially a shot in the dark, while it wasn't on a whim, he was simply attempting to expand on a sudden insight regarding the structure of proteins but it had been a thought and an inkling he possessed for over a decade.
Linus's experiment consisted of the folding of a sheet of paper over the areas or site he had been familiarized with from theoretical considerations that the chain of DNA could bend. His findings indicated that a polypeptide chain formed from sequences of amino acids. They would coil into the known helix structure which he actually gave the name, the "alpha helix".
The alpha helix was a discovery that went on to become a major component of biology concerning globular and fibrous proteins and how the alpha helix is responsible for controls of their structure and function.
The alpha helix and Pauling's findings were expanded upon for many years and one aspect of what it led to was the discoveries of Watson and Crick. Watson and Crick went on to study the structure of DNA and the two-stranded double helix.
Pauling's proposals of helical structure and molecular complimentary "underlay their theory." Paulings work allowed for the continued discoveries and was the forefront of molecular genetics and revolutionized all of biology.
“Linus Pauling Biography.” Linus Pauling Institute, 23 June 2020, lpi.oregonstate.edu/about/linus-pauling-biography.