Bacterial Transformation

Background

In early 20^th century, pneumonia was accountable for a large portion of infectious disease deaths¹. In order to develop an effective vaccine against pneumonia, Frederick Griffith set out to study two different strains of the Streptococcus pneumoniae: a non-virulent strain with a rough appearanc...

Back in the early 20th century, a British bacteriologist named Frederick Griffith was working with the pneumonia-causing bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae. He performed a simple experiment using two different strains. One strain is known as the S strain because of a protective capsule that makes the colonies or clumps it forms appear sm...