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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Neurospora crassa is a type of red bread mold of the phylum Ascomycota. The genus name, meaning "nerve spore" refers to the characteristic striations on the spores.N. crassa is used as a model organism because it is easy to grow and has a haploid life cycle that makes genetic analysis simple since recessive traits will show up in the offspring. Analysis of genetic recombination is facilitated by the ordered arrangement of the products of meiosis in Neurospora ascospores. Its entire genome of seven chromosomes has been sequenced.Neurospora was used by Edward Tatum and George Wells Beadle in their experiments for which they won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958. Beadle and Tatum exposed N. crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. They then observed failures in metabolic pathways caused by errors in specific enzymes. This led them to propose the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis that specific genes code for specific proteins. Their hypothesis was later elaborated to enzyme pathways by Norman Horowitz, also working in Neurospora. ... Read more

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George Beadle was a towering scientific figure whose work in the 1940s and 1950s marked the transition from classical genetics to the molecular era. Among other distinctions, he won the Nobel Prize with Edward Tatun for identifying that the role of genes is to specify proteins. An Uncommon Farmer is the first biography of a giant of genetics, written by two of the field's most distinguished authors, Paul Berg and Maxine Singer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Two great scientists on a leader of 20th Century Genetics
A page turner on the excitement of uncovering many secrets of life from the rediscovery of Mendel to the threshold of revealing the genetic dictionary and how it is translated into living forms told by two leading biochemical geneticists.

jf from nj
High marks for telling an interesting story well.George Beadle was a old-fashioned, principled country boy from Nebraska.But he and a cast of brilliant colleagues revolutionized how biology is done, and that is the highlight of the book.It is best when showing how Beadle got where he did scientifically.George Beadle was a driven,brilliant workaholic who kept his emotions tightly bottled, like his flies, except fpr short, well-directed bursts of anger directed at lab workers for sloppiness.His wonderful institutional personality contrasts sharply with more infamous, disagreeable sorts, like Delbruck and Watson, who appear later in the book.The book moves along smartly and efficiently, but lapses in a couple areas.I recognize this is a book about biology, but it's also a biography, and so Beadle's personal life is fair game, besides being inherently as interesting as much of the later administrative info, in which the book becomes bogged down.So, here goes: Frequent references are made to the unpleasant personality of George Beadle's first wife, Marion. But no attempt is made to flesh this out in any effective way.What did she say and do that was so offensive to so many people.What was her problem?She remains too much of a mystery, given that she was an important part of Beadle's life.This lack of info contrasts with the often overly detailed, and somewhat murky explanation of the neurospora life cycle.I had to read it three times to understand what they were talking about and have taught this stuff for 20 years.The authors are scientists, not historians or novelists, and it shows.Still, it's close to a page-turner for the first half. ... Read more