Paul Doty (1920 - 2011) and DNA Renaturation

Paul Doty was born in 1920. He died last month (Dec. 5, 2011) at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA [Paul Mead Doty (1920-2011)]. He was a Professor at Harvard for most of his career.

For many of us, Doty's major contribution to molecular biology was his study of DNA renaturation with his long-time post-doc and collaborator, Julius Marmur (1926 - 1996)¹, a graduate of McGill University in Montréal, Canada. The paper that most of us remember is Marmur and Doty 1962: "Thermal Renaturation of Deoxyribonucleic Acids." This was the first time that the renaturation of complex DNA had been studied in detail and the results have led to many of the common techniques in use today.

Read more »