Imagine that you are a student in Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase’s lab in the late 1940s. You are given five test tubes containing E. coli bacteria infected with T2 bacteriophages that have been labeled with either 32P or 35S. Unfortunately, you forget to mark the tubes and are now uncertain about which were labeled with 32P and which with 35S. You place the contents of each tube in a blender and turn it on for a few seconds to shear off the phage protein coats. You then centrifuge the contents to separate the protein coats and the cells. You check for thepresence of radioactivity and obtain the following results. Which tubes contained E. coli infected with 32P-labeled phage? Explain your answer.
Imagine that you are a student in Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase’s lab in the late 1940s. You are given five test tubes containing E. coli bacteria infected with T2 bacteriophages that have been labeled with either 32P or 35S. Unfortunately, you forget to mark the tubes and are now uncertain about which were labeled with 32P and which with 35S. You place the contents of each tube in a blender and turn it on for a few seconds to shear off the phage protein coats. You then centrifuge the contents to separate the protein coats and the cells. You check for the
presence of radioactivity and obtain the following results. Which tubes contained E. coli infected with 32P-labeled phage? Explain your answer.
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