RARE “Genetics Pioneer\" Dr Matthew Meselson Hand Signed FDC Dated 1963 For Sale

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RARE “Genetics Pioneer\" Dr Matthew Meselson Hand Signed FDC Dated 1963:
$699.99

Up for sale "Messenger RNA" Matthew Meselson Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1963.

May 24, 1930) is a geneticist and molecular biologist currently

at Harvard University, known

for his demonstration, with Franklin Stahl, of semi-conservative DNA replication. After completing his Ph.D under Linus Pauling at the California Institute of

Technology, Meselson became a Professor at Harvard University in

1960, where he has remained, today, as Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the

Natural Sciences. In the famous Meselson–Stahl experiment of

1958 he and Frank Stahl demonstrated

through nitrogen isotope labeling that DNA is

replicated semi-conservatively. In addition, Meselson, François Jacob, and Sydney Brenner discovered the existence of messenger RNA in 1961. Meselson has investigated DNA

repair in cells and how cells recognize and destroy foreign DNA, and,

with Werner Arber, was

responsible for the discovery of restriction enzymes. Since

1963 he has been interested in chemical and biological defense and arms

control, has served as a consultant on this subject to various government

agencies. Meselson worked with Henry Kissinger under the Nixon administration to

convince President Richard Nixon to renounce biological weapons, suspend

chemical weapons production, and support an international treaty prohibiting

the acquisition of biological agents for hostile purposes, which in 1972 became

known as the Biological Weapons

Convention. Meselson has received the Award in Molecular Biology

from the National Academy of

Sciences, the Public Service Award of the Federation of American

Scientists, the Presidential Award of the New York Academy of

Sciences, the 1995 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal of

the Genetics Society of America, as well as the Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science.

His laboratory at Harvard currently investigates the biological and

evolutionary nature of sexual reproduction, genetic recombination, and aging.

Many of his past students are notable biologists, including Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman, as well as Mark Ptashne, Susan Lindquist, Stephen F. Heinemann,

and Richard I. Morimoto. Meselson

was born in Denver, Colorado, on May 24, 1930 and attended elementary and

high-school in Los Angeles, California. While a young child he was interested

in chemistry and physics, and conducted many experiments in the natural

sciences at home. During World War II, Meselson attended summer school during summer

vacations and received enough high school credits to graduate a year and a half

ahead of time. When he attempted to acquire his diploma from the registrar at

his high school, however, he was informed that in order to receive his high

school diploma, he needed three full years of physical education, which he

lacked. After searching for options, he enrolled at the University of Chicago at

the age of 16 in 1946 intending to study Chemistry, since it did not require a

high school diploma to attend. In

1957, Meselson and Franklin Stahl (as

part of the phage group) showed that

DNA replicates semi-conservatively. In order to test hypotheses for how

DNA replicates, Meselson and Stahl, together with Jerome Vinograd, invented a method that separates

macromolecules according to their buoyant density. The method, equilibrium density gradient

centrifugation, was sufficiently sensitive that Meselson and Stahl were able to

separate DNA containing the heavy isotope of nitrogen, 15N,

from DNA made of the lighter isotope, 14N. In their classic

experiment, described and analyzed in a book by science historian Frederic L.

Holmes, they grew the bacterium Escherichia coli for many

generations in medium containing 15N as the only nitrogen

source and then switched the bacteria to growth medium containing 14N

instead. They extracted DNA from bacteria prior to switching and, at intervals,

for several generations thereafter. After one generation of growth, all the DNA

was seen to have a density half way between that of 15N DNA

and 14N DNA. In successive generations, the fraction of DNA

that was "half-heavy" fell by a factor of ½, as the total amount of

DNA increased two-fold. When the half-heavy DNA was made single stranded by

heating, it separated into two density species, one heavy (containing

only 15N) and one light (containing only 14N).

The experiment implied that, upon replication, the two complementary strands of

the bacterial DNA separate, and that each of the single strands directs the

synthesis of a new, complementary strand, a result that verified the suggestion

for DNA replication put forward five years earlier by James Watson and Francis Crick  and lent important early support for the

Watson-Crick model of the DNA molecule. In collaboration with Jean Weigle, Meselson then applied the density gradient method

to studies of genetic recombination in the bacteriophage Lambda. The question

was whether such recombination involved breakage of the recombining DNA

molecules or cooperative synthesis of new molecules. The question could be

answered by examining phage particles derived from co-infection of bacteria

with genetically marked Lambda phages that were labeled with heavy isotopes (13C

and 15N). The density-gradient method allowed individual

progeny phages to be characterized for their inheritance of parental DNA and of

parental genetic makers. Meselson's initial demonstration of

breakage-associated, replication-independent recombination was later found to

reflect the activity of a special system that can recombine Lambda DNA at only

one spot, normally used by the phage to insert itself into the chromosome of a

host cell. Subsequently, variations of the experiment by Franklin Stahl

revealed reciprocal dependencies between DNA replication and most genetic

recombination. With Charles Radding, Meselson developed a

model for recombination between DNA duplexes that guided research in the field

for the decade from 1973 to 1983. In

1961, Sydney Brenner, François Jacob and Meselson used the density-gradient

method to demonstrate the existence of messenger RNA In subsequent work,

Meselson and his students demonstrated the enzymatic basis of host-directed

restriction, a process by which cells recognize and destroy foreign DNA

and then predicted and demonstrated methyl-directed mismatch repair, a process that enables cells to correct

mistakes in replicating DNA. Meselson's current research is aimed at

understanding the advantage of sexual reproduction in evolution. Meselson and

his colleagues have recently demonstrated that Bdelloid rotifers do, in fact,

engage in sexual reproduction employing meiosis of an atypical sort. 

RARE “Genetics Pioneer" Dr Matthew Meselson Hand Signed FDC Dated 1963

$699.99

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