Question

list two significant contributions Seymour Benzer made to science and biology

Answer 1

Seymour Benzer was born in 1921 in the South Bronx, New York. Benzer's scientific contributions are broad and span from physics to molecular biologyto behavioral genetics.

1. For his contributions first in defining the linearity of the gene using bacteriophage genetics and subsequently in establishing the field of behavioral genetics,
2. Benzer organized his scientific contributions into three peroids, the physics peroid, the molecular biology peroid, and the behavioral biology peroid.
3. Benzer performed experiments on X rays caused inherited genetic mutations. For this experiment he got Nobel Prize in 1946.
4. After spending two years in laboratory, Benzer developed T4 rll system, a new genetic technique involving recombination in T4 bacteriophage rll mutants, after observing that a particular rll mutation that caused the bacteriophage to eliminate bacteria more rapidly than usual.
5. The data collected by him provided evidences like, gene is not an indivisible entity.
6. He also proved that mutations were distributed in many different parts of a single gene. Based on his rll data, Benzer also proposed distinct classes of mutations including delections, point mutations, missense mutations and nonsense mutations.
7. Benzer was one of the first scientist in the field of behavioral genetics. He used forwarding genetics to investigate the genetic basis of various bahaviors such as phototaxis, circadian rhythms, etc.
8. Benzer developed noval apparatuses such as the countercurrent device inorder to identify mutants. He identified mutants for a wide varitey of characteristics like vision, locomotion, stress sensitivity.
9. Benzer discovered first circadian rhythm mutants. He was also at the front in the study of neurodegeneration in fruit files, modeling human diseases and attempting to suppress them.
10. He also contributed to the field of aging biology.