Question

Garrod concluded that he had seen 'inborn errors in metabolism' in the family he was studying. Describe the experiments of Beadle and Tatum that support this conclusion.

Answer 1

Archibald Garrod was the first one to link disorders with genetics. He proposed that alkaptonuria
is caused due to inborn errors of metabolism in a family.
Later Beadle and Tatum conducted experiments and appreciated Garrod's work.
They worked with bread mold, which is a good organism to study and conducted genetic experiments.
They induced mutations using X rays which caused certain mutations in specific enzymes needed for growth.
When such mutations are induced in the organism, they failed to grow a minimal medium but grew
on complete medium.
They concluded these as nutritional mutants.