Editing Hershey–Chase experiment (section)

===Confirmation===
{{further|DNA|DNA#History of DNA research}}

Hershey and Chase concluded that protein was not likely to be the hereditary genetic material.  However, they did not make any conclusions regarding the specific function of DNA as hereditary material, and only said that it must have some undefined role.<ref name=Hershey /><ref name="OConnor">{{cite news | last=O'Connor| first=Clare | title=Isolating hereditary material: Frederick Griffith, Oswald Avery, Alfred Hershey, and Martha Chase | year=2008 | url=http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/isolating-hereditary-material-frederick-griffith-oswald-avery-336 | work=[[Nature Publishing Group|Scitable by Nature Education]] | access-date=20 March 2011}}</ref>

Confirmation and clarity came a year later in 1953, when [[James D. Watson]] and [[Francis Crick]] correctly hypothesized, in their journal article "[[Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid]]", the [[double helix]] structure of DNA, and suggested the [[DNA replication|copying mechanism]] by which DNA functions as hereditary material. Furthermore, Watson and Crick suggested that DNA, the genetic material, is responsible for the synthesis of the thousands of proteins found in cells. They had made this proposal based on the structural similarity that exists between the two macromolecules: both protein and DNA are linear sequences of monomers (amino acids and nucleotides, respectively).<ref name="pmid16578429">{{cite journal |vauthors=Pauling L, Corey RB| title = A Proposed Structure for the Nucleic Acids | journal = Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. | volume = 39 | issue = 2 | pages = 84–97 |date=February 1953 | pmid = 16578429 | pmc = 1063734 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.39.2.84| bibcode = 1953PNAS...39...84P | doi-access = free }}</ref>