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The incorporation of genetic material into a bacterium from DNA in the surrounding medium. The phenomenon was discovered by F. Griffith (1928) who converted (transformed) rough-coated Diplococcus Pneumoniae into a smooth-coated strain by mixing it with extracts from the latter under appropriate conditions. Later O..T. Avery, C.M. MacLeod, and M. McCarty (1944) showed that the sub-stance responsible for the transformation was DNA. The latter experiment is often quoted as one of the first pieces of evidence that DNA, not protein, is the genetic material.
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