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Chargaff

/ ˈʃɑːɡæf /

noun

  1. ChargaffErwin19052002MUSAustrianSCIENCE: chemist Erwin. 1905–2002, US biochemist, born in Austria, noted esp for his work on DNA
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Example Sentences

In 1950, the Austrian-born biochemist Erwin Chargaff, working at Columbia University in New York, had found a peculiar pattern.

Whenever Chargaff digested DNA and analyzed the base composition, he always found that the A and the T were present in nearly identical proportion, as were the G and the C. Something, mysteriously, had paired A to T and G to C, as if these chemicals were congenitally linked.

And the importance of Chargaff’s rules became obvious in retrospect—A and T, and G and C, had to be present in identical amounts because they were always complementary: they were the two mutually opposing teeth in the zipper.

This explained biochemist Erwin Chargaff’s discovery that the DNA of any species has the same amount of guanine as of cytosine, and of adenine as of thymine6.

From Nature

The high point in Chargaff’s scorn came when he led Francis into admitting that he did not remember the chemical differences among the four bases.

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