During semiconservative DNA replication, one of the DNA strands in each new double helix comes from the original molecule, and one is newly synthesized. It is for that reason that DNA replication is 'semiconservative'.
DNA is a double helix molecule composed of two long chains of nucleotides linked by hydrogen bonds.
Meselson and Stahl discovered that DNA replication is semiconservative by experimenting with the bacterium Escherichia coli.
During their experiments, Meselson and Stahl labeled the DNA of E. coli across generations using radioactive isotopes of nitrogen (N) and they observed that only one DNA strand contained these isotopes.
Thus, DNA replication is semiconservative because each daughter cell contained one newly synthesized DNA strand and one original DNA strand.
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