The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology: Meselson & Stahl, The Semiconservative Replication of DNA

In 1958, Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl published the “most beautiful experiment”, where they demonstrated that DNA undergoes semi-conservative replication. In this video, we describe the experiments that lead to this discovery and why understanding how DNA replicates is so important. This video is a complement to Matthew Meselson’s iBiology Discovery talk, where Meselson recalls the events that led him to meet Frank Stahl and to plan and execute these experiments.

This video was produced in collaboration with iBiology.
iBiology is a growing collection of free open-access online videos by scientists about research and discoveries in fields including cell biology, neuroscience, molecular biology, microbiology, ecology, development, and biophysics, and also features short talks on topics such as professional development, careers, policy, and education. iBiology is funded by NSF, NIGMS, and HHMI, and is supported by the ASCB and UCSF.

Click here for the original scientific paper.