Discovery
Lambda phage was discovered by Esther Lederberg in 1950 when it was noticed that a colony produced by replica plating was "nibbled and plaqued". Lambda phage has been used heavily as a model organism, and has been a rich source for useful tools in microbial genetics, and later in molecular genetics. Uses include its application as a vector for the cloning of recombinant DNA; the use of its site-specific recombinase (int) for the shuffling of cloned DNAs by the gateway method; and the application of its Red operon, including the proteins Red alpha (also called 'exo'), beta and gamma in the DNA engineering method called recombineering.
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Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
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—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)