Beadle, George Wells

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Beadle, George Wells (1903–89) US geneticist. During his study of mutations in bread mould (Neurospora crassa), Beadle and Edward Tatum found that genes are responsible for the synthesis of enzymes, and that these enzymes control each step of all biochemical reactions occurring in an organism. For this discovery they shared, with J. Lederberg, the 1958 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

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