Word: meselson
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Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Matthew S. Meselson has devoted his career to studying questions in molecular biology and fighting biological warfare...
...Meselson is now researching whether species can proliferate and survive without sexual reproduction...
...Meselson is a case in point. I dropped by his office in Dec. 1995 because he had been awarded a lifetime medal for his contributions to genetics as a result of his research on how DNA chains replicate. Those of you who have taken genetics or biology courses may have heard of the Meselson-Stahl model of DNA recombination, now a fixture in genetics textbooks...
...asked Meselson about his current research, and he explained that he was studying the question of why sex exists. He was examining a species of female pond dwellers, which live without sex and have no males, sperm or fertilization among their species. Since the species reproduces asexually, a daughter should inherit all her mother's genes. But Meselson found that the offspring differed from their parent genetically, and developed the idea of a silent mutation, a change in genes that has no effect on an organism. Thus, Meselson's findings cast doubt on the prevalent assumption that sex is essential...
After talking about his own research for about half an hour, Meselson asked me about my own interests. I told him I was a junior majoring in government and was thinking about writing my thesis about the effects of the Internet on political participation. He asked me whether I thought there was any effect, and I started talking about the Christian Coalition, which was built up largely over the Internet. He asked if the Coalition had a home page on the World Wide Web, and I said I thought so, but hadn't actually looked at it. He motioned...