What did Griffith discover as a result of his experiments?

Answer 1

Frederick Griffith was a British bacteriologist. In January 1928, he reported what is now known as Griffith's Experiment, the first widely accepted demonstrations of bacterial transformation, whereby a bacterium distinctly changes its form and function.

Answer 2

Frederick Griffith is a British bacteriologist who is famous for the Griffith Experiment. He concluded that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information through a process known as transformation.

Answer 3

Griffith's experiment was one of the first experiments suggesting that bacteria are capable of transferring genetic information through a process known as transformation. He observed the DNA of the III-S strain bacteria. While the bacteria had been killed, the DNA had survived the heating process.

Answer 4

Frederick Griffith's famous experiment was actually done with mice, not rats. It was when he was trying to develop a vaccine during the Spanish influenza pandemic after WWI. He was using 2 different strains (types) of the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae- one was "smooth" and was called the S strain, while the other was "rough" and called the R strain.

The S strain killed the mice within about a day, while the R strain did not. This is because the S strain had a capsule (a slimy layer on its surface) that protected it from the immune system, while the R strain didn't have a capsule and therefore was avirulent (not causing bad effects).

The S strain was then heated to kill the bacteria, and the dead strain was injected into mice, where it didn't have any effect. However, when the dead S strain was mixed with alive R strain bacteria, it did kill the mice. When Griffith studied the bacteria from the dead mice's cells, he found that the R bacteria had acquired capsules. Up until then, scientists had thought the two types of bacteria were separate and could not change.

Griffith concluded that a "transforming principle" from the dead S strain had changed the R strain into the same type of it. This was significant as it led to the discovery of how DNA works (since the "transforming principle" turned out to be DNA), and it was the beginning of modern Molecular Biology.

Answer 5

Griffith had discovered what is now called Transformation, trasformation is a change in genotype caused when cells take up foreign genetic material.

Answer 6

Cells contain a substance called transforming factor that can change the genome of a host.

Answer 7

it showed that transformation was possible.