In this article, Luria provided an overview of the state of knowledge of viruses and how they replicate. Though he accepted Oswald Avery's proof that DNA was the "transforming principle" in bacteria, here he suggested that the protein component of viruses, rather than DNA, might have the primary role in replication. Luria later explained to historian Horace Judson that this oversight was primarily due to his "not thinking biochemically," adding that "I don't think we attached great importance to whether the gene was protein or nucleic acid." Luria noted that James Watson and Francis Crick's work on the structure of DNA in the early 1950s permanently settled the question.
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