Edward Lawrie Tatum Encyclopedia Article

Edward Lawrie Tatum

The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.

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Edward Lawrie Tatum

1909-1975

American microbiologist who shared the 1958 Nobel Prize with George Beadle and Joshua Lederberg for discoveries that demonstrated the relationship between genes and the proteins they controlled. Exploiting the potential of the bread mold Neurospora as a genetic and biochemical tool, they established the "one gene, one enzyme" theory. Beadle and Tatum irradiated the mold to create nutritional mutants and identified specific defects in the mutants. The induced mutations exhibited Mendelian patterns of inheritance.