History of genetics of the fruit fly "Drosophila melanogaster". In 1928, Frederick Griffith showed that genes could be transferred. In what is now known as Griffith's experiment, injections into a mouse of a deadly strain of bacteria that had been heat-killed transferred genetic information to a safe strain of the same bacteria, killing the mouse. A series of subsequent discoveries led to the realization decades later that the genetic material is made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). In 1941, George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum showed that mutations in genes caused errors in specific steps in metabolic pathways. This showed that specific genes
Mesoxalic acid and reacts with water to form a product commonly called "mesoxalic acid (mono)hydrate", more properly dihydroxymalonic acid, HO-(C=O)-C(OH)-(C=O)-OH. In product catalogs and other contexts, the terms "mesoxalic acid", "oxomalonic acid", etc. often refer to this "hydrated" compound. In particular, the product traded as "sodium mesoxalate monohydrate" is almost always sodium dihydroxymalonate. Mesoxalic acid can be obtained synthetically by hydrolysis of alloxan with baryta water, by warming caffuric acid with lead acetate solution, or from glycerin diacetate and concentrated nitric acid in the cold. The product can be obtained also by oxidation of tartronic acid It is also prepared by the