GoodTaste
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- Feb 19, 2016
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Does "wondered aloud" mean "spoke out loudly in an inquiring way"?
The problem here is that there seems to be controdictary: Because what he spoke aloud is "the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA", which is incorrect (We now know DNA is exactly the carrier of genetic information); and what the author narrated in the following passages is that DNA showed its role as the carrier! Which the author touts as a revolutionary discovery.
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In 1936, at the Rockefeller Institute on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a microbiologist called Oswald Avery wondered aloud if the "transforming principle"—that is, the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA. No one took much notice. DNA seemed just a boring binding agent for the protein in the cell.
............................
Avery’s discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one.
In 1943, Avery, at 67, was too old for military service. Still working at the Rockefeller Institute and building on an experiment with pneumococcus (bacteria that cause pneumonia) done by the English physician Frederick Griffith in 1928, he made a revolutionary discovery. He found that when DNA was transferred from a dead strain of pneumoccocus to a living strain, it brought with it the hereditary attributes of the donor.
Source:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/before.html
The problem here is that there seems to be controdictary: Because what he spoke aloud is "the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA", which is incorrect (We now know DNA is exactly the carrier of genetic information); and what the author narrated in the following passages is that DNA showed its role as the carrier! Which the author touts as a revolutionary discovery.
**********************
In 1936, at the Rockefeller Institute on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a microbiologist called Oswald Avery wondered aloud if the "transforming principle"—that is, the carrier of the genetic information from old chromosomes to new—might not be the nucleic acid, DNA. No one took much notice. DNA seemed just a boring binding agent for the protein in the cell.
............................
Avery’s discovery has been called worth two Nobel Prizes, but he never got even one.
In 1943, Avery, at 67, was too old for military service. Still working at the Rockefeller Institute and building on an experiment with pneumococcus (bacteria that cause pneumonia) done by the English physician Frederick Griffith in 1928, he made a revolutionary discovery. He found that when DNA was transferred from a dead strain of pneumoccocus to a living strain, it brought with it the hereditary attributes of the donor.
Source:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/before.html
