Last time, we explored the work of Friedrich Miescher and his discovery of DNA, but we didn’t talk about how DNA stores information about the traits we display and inherit. That’s because at first no one had any idea that DNA was really all that important. People just assumed it was yet another cellular substance in a deluge of substances being discovered during that period. However, at roughly the same time that Miescher was doing his work, other scientists were finding new ways to observe never before seen structures and processes in cells. But it was a long time before anyone suspected that these cellular observations were related to DNA. This is a recurring theme in science: researchers in different fields find themselves studying different aspects of the same phenomenon, and it often takes decades for scientists to put all the pieces together to give an accurate context for all of their data.