Question

Two students decide to repeat the Hershey and Chase experiment with modifications. They decide to label the nitrogen of the DNA, rather than the phosphate. They reasoned that every nucleotide has only 1 phosphate, but 2-5 to nitrogens so labeling the nitrogens would provide a stronger signal than labeling the phosphates. Why will this experiment fail to show what Hershey and Chase showed?

Answer 1

radioactivity will not be able to tell the difference between the DNA and proteins

Step-by-step explanation:

It seems that the experiment will fail to show what Hershey and Chase showed because they modify some of the aspects. These modifications will cause changes to the results, the main one being that radioactivity will not be able to tell the difference between the DNA and proteins. This is because Amino Acids are proteins that also contain nitrogen atoms, thus labeling the nitrogen would include all DNA and proteins. This being the main reason why Hershey and Chase decided to label the DNA instead.