McCarty, Maclyn

[person]

(June 9, 1911 - January 2, 2005) An American physician and geneticist who specialized in infectious diseases. McCarty is remembered for discovering, with Oswald Avery and Colin MacLeod, that DNA is responsible for changes in form and function of bacteria. McCarty's later work focused on rheumatic fever and its relationship to the Streptococcus bacteria, and he pioneered the now-standard medical practice of using protein levels in blood to measure rheumatic inflammation.