The ìTransforming Principleî

Griffiths reasoned that something had passed from the dead bacteria to the living ones that transformed them from harmless to harmful.
- He called this the ìtransforming principleî

Years of work by Oswald Avery and colleagues, aimed at isolating and purifying this ìprincipleî, showed, by 1944, that it was. . . nucleic acid.
- Bacteria contain nucleic acid, too. . . itís not found only in eukaryotic nuclei.
- To see how it works, we have to look at its structure.

Griffiths reasoned that something had passed from the dead bacteria to the living ones that transformed them from harmless to harmful.