History of Nucleic Acid Chemistry

The History of Nucleic Acid Chemistry

Milestones

Isolation of DNA

The person credited with being the first to isolate DNA was the Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher. He called the biochemical substance rich in phosphorus "nuclein". The initial work is dated as having occurred in early 1869.^[1] Miescher worked at the University of Tübingen at the time, and did not know what the function of nuclein was.

References

[1] R. Dahm, Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of DNA. Devel. Biol. 2005, 278, 274-288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2004.11.028