to prevent injury, decay, waste, or loss of: Conserve your strength for the race. to use or manage (natural resources) wisely; preserve; save: Conserve the woodlands. Physics, Chemistry. to hold (a property) constant during an interaction or process: the interaction conserved linear momentum.
Using a bacteriophage (virus) and the bacterium Escherichia coli, Hershey and Chase were able to show that only viral DNA entered the host; thus it was DNA that directed the production of new viral particles. This strongly suggested that DNA was the genetic material. 1  Take a tour of the Hershey-Chase Experiment.
This information is read using the genetic code, which specifies the sequence of the amino acids within proteins. The code is read by copying stretches of DNA into the related nucleic acid RNA, in a process called transcription. The structure of DNA was first discovered by James D. Watson and Francis Crick.