Sue Wickner and her coauthors MIchel Wright, Reed Wickner and Jerry Hurwitz published an early paper showing DNA replication in the test tube. They found that the bacterial virus or phage Phi X174 could be converted from single stranded to the double stranded replicative form in the test tube and that the reaction required the gene products of dnaC, dnaE, and dnaG genes of the phage.[3] At NIH, her research has illuminated the action of proteins that utilize adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy in tiny machines to replicate DNA, remodel proteins, and break down proteins.