Read on Twitter
Because I do believe that it's important to know the history of your field and inspired by @carlzimmer @matthewcobb & Michel Morange's books that contain some fantastic material for teaching, a thread with some #classicpaper in #molecularbiology #DNA
1944 Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod & Maclyn McCarty - DNA, not protein as was commonly believed, is the hereditary material for bacteria, and the cause of bacterial transformation http://jem.rupress.org/content/79/2/137
1947 André Boivin & Roger Vendrely - a near forgotten 2 pages in French that suggest almost explicitly that DNA --> RNA --> protein https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02155119
1952 & 1953 Alexander Dounce - like Boivin & Vendrely, Dounce is one of the first to propose that DNA might serve as a template for the synthesis of RNA, which in turn serves as a template for the synthesis of proteins https://www.nature.com/articles/172541a0
1952 Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase - They confirmed that DNA was the molecule of heredity http://jgp.rupress.org/content/36/1/39 a.k.a as the blender experiment
1953 The structure of DNA - Watson & Crick https://www.nature.com/articles/171737a0, Franklin & Gosling https://www.nature.com/articles/171740a0, Wilkins Stokes Wilson https://www.nature.com/articles/171738a0
1956 & 1958 Francis Crick - The Central Dogma: once ‘information’ is passed into protein it cannot get out again https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/SCBBZY
NOT the Central Dogma DNA -> RNA -> Protein (for more info see http://judgestarling.tumblr.com/post/177554581856/the-fallacious-commingling-of-two-unrelated)
1958 Francis Crick - The adaptor hypothesis: to explain how information encoded in DNA is used to specify the amino acid sequence of proteins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptor_hypothesis
1958 Mahlon Hoagland - discovery of the adaptors = soluble RNAs a.k.a. tRNA https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13538965
Vernon Ingram - The first demonstration that the abnormal haemoglobin in sickle cell anaemia patients is caused by an alteration in one amino acid https://www.nature.com/articles/180326a0
1958 Matthew Meselson and Franklin W. Stahl - experimental proof of Semi-Conservative DNA Replication http://www.pnas.org/content/44/7/671
1959 Pardee, Jacob & Monod https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283659800450 a.k.a The PaJaMo experiment that supported the hypothesis that a molecule mediated the production of proteins from DNA (cytoplasmic messenger)
1961 Jacob & Monod - the fundamental basis of gene regulation, one of the most influential paper in the history of modern biology (& I am not saying that because Jacob & Monod were French 
) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283661800727?via%3Dihub
1961 Brenner, Jacob, Meselson https://www.nature.com/articles/190576a0 + Gros, Hiatt, Gilbert, Kurland, Risebrough, Watson https://www.nature.com/articles/190581a0 the discovery of messenger RNA (mRNA)
for an historical point of view of the discovery of mRNA, see also this great recount by @matthewcobb https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)00606-5
1961 Marshall W. Nirenberg & J. Heinrich Matthaei - A poly-U RNA was translated into polyphenylalanine in a cell-free system. This experiment provided the initial clue to breaking the genetic code http://www.pnas.org/content/47/10/1588 & https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/nirenberg/HS4_polyU.htm
1961 Crick, Barnett, Brenner & Watts-Tobin - The existing knowledge in 1961 & the experimental procedures were certainly not sufficient to allow anyone to deduce the general nature of the genetic code but they nearly solved the riddle https://www.nature.com/articles/1921227a0
1965 Margarita Salas - The first experimental results indicating that the direction of reading of the genetic message is from the 5’ to the 3’ end https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5320647 (see also My scientific life by Margarita Salas in 2016 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21597081.2016.1271250)
1964 K. Marcker & F. Sanger https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283664801649 and 1966 B. F. C. Clark & K. A. Marcker https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002228366680150X - a role for methionine in polypeptide chain initiation.
1966 Francis Crick - The Wobble hypothesis. A visionary Crick again explains why multiple codons can code for a single amino acid https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283666800220
1967 Brenner - The last of the 64-Triplet Genetic Code is cracked https://www.nature.com/articles/213449a0
1969 Britten & Davidson - Like the Monod & Jacob paper in 1961, a very influential paper on gene regulation. Their theory stated the hypothesis that repetitive non-coding sequences are at the core of genetic regulation http://science.sciencemag.org/content/165/3891/349
1968 Karin Ippen-Ihler - Studies using the lac operon identified thepromoter as a cis controlling element for gene transcription https://www.nature.com/articles/217825a0
1969 Bob Roeder & William J. Rutter - the discovery of 3 chromatographically separable forms of eukaryotic RNA polymerase from sea urchin embryos (I, II and III) https://www.nature.com/articles/224234a0
1970 Kedinger, Gniazdowski, Mandel, Gissinger & Chambon - Pierre Chambon also isolated 2 activities from calf thymus, Pol A (Pol I) & Pol B (Pol II), of which only Pol B was inhibited by the Amanita toxin α-amanitin https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0006291X70910995
1974 Roger Kornberg - The organizing principle of the nucleosome, a histone octamer, and its mode of interaction with DNA http://science.sciencemag.org/content/184/4139/865 & http://science.sciencemag.org/content/184/4139/868
1975 P. Oudet, M. Gross-Bellard, & P. Chambon - the first electron microscopy of reconstituted histone–DNA complexes a.k.a. beads on a string https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/0092-8674(75)90149-X
1977 several papers reporting the discovery of interrupted 'split' genes a.k.a introns https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/269380 & https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/902310 & https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/593351 & https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/902321 & https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/198139 & https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/902319
1980 Corden - One of the first comparisons of promoter sequences from efficiently transcribed protein-coding genes http://science.sciencemag.org/content/209/4463/1406.long
1981 Julian Banerji Sandro Rusconi & Walter Schaffner - discovery of enhancers https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/0092-8674(81)90413-X.pdf (see also this historical perspective by Walter Schaffner https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bchm.2015.396.issue-4/hsz-2014-0303/hsz-2014-0303.xml)
OK I think I will stop here, thanks all for your interest in this thread and for all you very positive feedback #classicpaper
