Question

All of the following statements about the “blender experiment” is true except
A. The experiment preceded Watsons and Crick's elucidation of DNA structure.
B. Hershey and Chase used radioactive sulfur to follow the protein in their experiment.
C. Hershey and Chase used radioactive phosphorus to follow the nucleotides in their experiment.
D. It was discovered by them that while different strains of bacteria have different percentages of nitrogen bases, the percent of adenine and the percent of thymine are equal as are the percentages of guanine and cytosine.
E. Hershey and Chase experiment lent strong credence to the idea that DNA is the hereditary material, at least of viruses.

Answer 1

Hint: The most well-known Hershey-Chase experiment is also called the Waring Blender experiment. In this experiment, Hershey and Chase proved that phages only inject their DNA into host bacterial cell and it serves as the replicating genetic material of phages

Complete answer:
The correct option is (E) Hershey and Chase experiment lent strong credence to the idea that DNA is the hereditary material, at least of viruses.
The Hershey-Chase blender experiment proved that phage DNA is the genetic material in bacteriophages or viruses, not protein. For this, and his work on bacteriophage, Hershey shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1969.
In this experiment, Hershey and Chase showed that when bacteriophages (composed of DNA and protein) infect bacteria, then their DNA only enters the host bacterial cell, not the protein. Hershey and Chase and subsequent discoveries all served to prove that DNA is the hereditary material (genetic material which transfers from one generation to another generation).
They collected the sample (bacteria) for the experiment and then infected it with radioactive phosphorus-labeled phages and the other sample with radioactive sulfur-labeled phages. Then, they stirred each sample in a Waring Blender (which is a kitchen blender). They used a blender because if they use a centrifuge, it spins too fast and this would destroy the bacterial cells.

Note:
Hershey and Chase performed their experiments which is later named the Hershey-Chase experiment. The experiment cleared the various arguments regarding whether genetic material was composed of protein or DNA. The Blender experiment provided concrete evidence that genes were made of DNA.