Abstract
The fundamental investigations which led to the discovery of the nucleic acids were made by Friedrich Miescher [1] (1844–95), who may be regarded as the founder of our knowledge of the chemistry of the cell nucleus. In work carried out in the laboratory of Hoppe-Seyler in Tübingen in 1868, he isolated the nuclei from pus cells obtained from discarded surgical bandages, and showed the presence in them of an unusual phosphorus-containing compound that he called ‘nuclein’ and which we now know to have been nucleoprotein. It was subsequently shown that nucleic acids were normal constituents of all cells and tissues, and Miescher’s investigations of the nucleic acids were continued by Altmann, who in 1889 described a method for the preparation of protein-free nucleic acids from animal tissues and from yeast [2].
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© 1992 Roger L. P. Adams, John T. Knowler and David P. Leader
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Adams, R.L.P., Knowler, J.T., Leader, D.P. (1992). Introduction. In: The Biochemistry of the Nucleic Acids. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2290-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2290-0_1
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