Editing Frederick Griffith (section)

==Posthumous identification of transforming factor==

===Last days of Griffith and colleague===
The first Griffith Memorial Lecture indicates that Fred Griffith died on the night of 17 April 1941<ref name=Hayes>{{Cite journal|author=Hayes W |url=http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CC/A/A/I/K/_/ccaaik.pdf |title=First Griffith Memorial Lecture. Genetic transformation: A retrospective appreciation |journal=Journal of General Microbiology|doi=10.1099/00221287-45-3-385 |volume=45 |issue=3 |year=1966 |pages=385–397|doi-access=free }}</ref>—though the fourth lecture indicates that he died in his apartment in February 1941<ref name=pmid4143929/>—alongside friend and colleague William M. Scott amid an [[strategic bombing|air raid]] during World War II's [[London Blitz]]. A few weeks earlier, Scott had become director of the laboratory, which, with the outbreak of war, had become Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service. Both dated 3 May 1941, his [[obituary]] in ''[[The Lancet]]'' mentioned the historical discovery briefly,<ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(00)95174-2 |title=Obituary |journal=Lancet|url=http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/CCBBCC|year=1941|volume=237|issue=6140|pages=588–589}}</ref> and his obituary in ''[[British Medical Journal]]'' failed to mention it.<ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1136/bmj.1.4191.691 |title=The 'English Disease'|year=1941|last1=Bacharach|first1=A.L.|journal=British Medical Journal|volume=1|pages=691|issue=4191|pmc=2161843}}</ref>

===Avery ''et al'' then Watson & Crick===
In 1944 identification of the transforming factor was published in the ''[[Journal of Experimental Medicine]]'' by Avery, [[Colin Munro MacLeod|Colin MacLeod]], and [[Maclyn McCarty]] of The Rockefeller Hospital.<ref>{{Cite journal|doi = 10.1084/jem.79.2.137|title=Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types – Induction of Transformation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III|last1=Avery|first1=Oswald T|last2=MacLeod|first2=Colin M|last3=McCarty|first3=Maclyn|journal=[[Journal of Experimental Medicine]]|pmid=19871359|pmc=2135445|volume=79|issue=2|date=February 1944|pages=137–58}}</ref> This identification departed from the prevailing belief that the ''protein'' content of [[chromosome]]s probably was the anatomical structure of genes, although it would take another decade—till [[James D. Watson|Watson]] and [[Francis Crick|Crick]]'s 1953 [[Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid|paper]] in ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'' indicating DNA's molecular structure suggesting how a molecule as seemingly simple as DNA could encode the structure of proteins—for the interpretation of DNA as genes to become widely accepted.<ref>{{Cite journal|doi=10.1038/nature01398 |title=Discovering genes are made of DNA |author=McCarty M |journal=Nature|pmid=12540908 |volume=421 |issue=6921 |date=January 2003 |pages=406|bibcode=2003Natur.421..406M |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Anderson | first1 = ES |date=Sep 1985 | title = The road to DNA | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=JGhFy902N6UC&pg=PA53 | journal = New Scientist | volume = 107 | issue = 1474| pages = 53–4 }}</ref>

===Applications===

Biologists made little more than speculation of Griffith's report of transformation until genetics research in 1951.<ref>{{Cite journal |author=Lederberg J |title=Notes on the biological interpretation of Fred Griffith's finding |journal=American Scientist |url=http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/CCAAQX}}</ref> Griffith's report was virtually ignored by [[clinicians]], and by the medical sector as a whole.<ref name=pmid4143929/>