American molecular biologist notable for his experimental confirmation of the Watson-Crick theory of the structure and method of replication of deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA).

Meselson obtained his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, in 1957. His research, with Franklin W. Stahl (Stahl, Franklin W.), showed that during cell division, the replication of DNA in the cell is “semi-conservative”; that is, the DNA splits into its two component strands, each of which acquires a newly synthesized partner before passing into one of the daughter cells. Bacteria cultured in a nutrient containing a heavy isotope of nitrogen incorporated it in their DNA. When the bacteria were returned to nutrients containing ordinary nitrogen, their reproduction formed cells that had a new medium-weight DNA. (A new technique, density-gradient centrifugation, could be used to separate such molecules by weight.) On heating, this DNA separated into half heavy and half light strands. Meselson and Stahl concluded that the new DNA molecules were composed of one strand of each: the heavy inherited, the light newly synthesized. Meselson was on the staff at Caltech until 1960, when he was appointed associate professor of biology at Harvard University. He continued to study problems in the synthesis of DNA, RNA, and proteins.