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Describe the Hershey-Chase experiment.

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Describe the Hershey-Chase experiment. Explain in your own words, as if you were talking to someone with no genetics background, how they used radioactive isotopes to demonstrate that DNA, not protein, is the genetic material. Be sure to include details of the experiment in your explanation.

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The solution describes the Hershey-Chase Experiment.

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Hershey and Chase made use of the knowledge at that time that certain bacteriophages (viruses which infect bacteria) are made up protein shells that encase DNA. They also knew that infected cells had genetic material from the viruses incorporated within the cell. The virus, now empty of it's DNA, floats away from the cell after infection.

There was a lot of debate at that time, as to whether DNA or protein was the genetic material off which other things are built.
Hershey and Chase took radioactively-labelled ...

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