The discovery of genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis: 1965 Nobel Prize Laureates André Lwoff, François Jacob, Jacques Monod

Abstract

The middle of the 20th century was marked by a number of significant events in molecular biology, among which the groundbreaking discovery of the double helix of DNA, which could self-replicate and thus perform the main life function; the isolation of enzymes for DNA synthesis, and DNA synthesis outside the cell, to name but a few. However, the question of how the information transmission from DNA to proteins is regulated remained open. The concept of the mechanism of regulation of prokaryotic gene activity developed by three French scientists (André Lwoff, François Jacob, Jacques Monod; Nobel Prize 1965), which was a logical outcome of the research in genetics and biochemistry over the previous decades, is recognized to be one of the remarkable achievements in molecular biology. This article describes the essence of the discovery of Lwoff, Jacob and Mono that is the identification of two different groups of genes – structural and functional – and the role that these genes perform in the transmission of genetic information.

Keywords

• andré lwoff
• françois jacob
• genetic information
• jacques monod
• molecular biology
• structural and functional genes