Brenner, Jacob & Meselson Demonstrate the Existence of Messenger RNA

In 1961 South African molecular biologist Sydney Brenner working at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, French molecular biologist François Jacob at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, and American molecular biologist Matthew Meselson at Caltech in Pasadena showed that short-lived RNA molecules that they called messenger RNA (mRNA) carry the genetic instructions from DNA to structures in the cell called ribosomes. They also demonstrated that ribosomes are the site of protein synthesis.

Brenner, Jacob & Meselson, "An Unstable Intermediate Carrying Information from Genes to Ribosomes for Protein Synthesis," Nature 190 (1961) 576-80.

J. Norman (ed) Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed (1991) no. 256.10.

In January 2014 images of Sydney Brenner's original autograph manuscript for this paper, and typed drafts were available from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories CSHL Archives Repository at this link.