Additional Reading:

Cobb, M. 2016.  A speculative history of DNA:  What if Oswald Avery had died in 1934?  PLoS Biology 14: e2001197.  A review of the transforming principle experiments, with some thoughts about alternative history.

Crick, F. 1958 On protein synthesis.  Symp. Soc. Exp. Biol. 12: 138-163. PDFs available on-line. One of the most influential lectures of its time, including Crick’s adaptor hypothesis (later found to be tRNA) and many other ideas about the Central Dogma in advance of these being experimentally demonstrated. 

Lederberg, J. 1991 The gene (HJ Muller 1947).  Genetics 129: 313-316.  HJ Muller delivered a lecture in 1947 on the nature of the gene, after it was recognized that genes were made of DNA but before the structure of DNA was known.  This is an historical perspective on that lecture and Muller’s influential ideas.

Lederberg, J. 1994.  The transformation of genetics by DNA: An anniversary celebration of Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty (1944).  Genetics 136: 423-426.  An historical perspective on the transforming principle experiments that demonstrated that genes were made of DNA.

Watson, J.D., and Crick, F.H. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171, 737-738.

Additional Reading for Boxes:

Metzker, ML 2010.  Sequencing technologies—the next generation.  Nature Rev. Genet. 11: 669-680