Word: butenandt
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
German Chemists Peter Karlson and Adolf Butenandt of the University of Munich collected three tons of silkworm pupae, ground up the little animals, then carefully processed the mess to extract 100 milligrams (one three-hundredth of an ounce) of a hormone called ecdysone. They knew ecdysone played a large part in the silkworm's life cycle, and when they discovered that it was remarkably similar to human sex hormones, they were fascinated. But what, if anything, did it have to do with DNA's genetic code...