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>They had the 'natural gift' of picking up on the clues hinting that DNA, rather than protein, was central to the mechanism of biological inheritance.

That was Hershey and Chase [0]. Watson and Crick were the first to solve the structure of DNA.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey%E2%80%93Chase_experime...

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Point taken, though that article also says "Hershey and Chase concluded that protein was not likely to be the hereditary genetic material. However, they did not make any conclusions regarding the specific function of DNA as hereditary material, and only said that it must have some undefined role."

Arguably, my general point still holds, though with an expanded cast of characters.

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