Biochemical Preparation Collection

The preparation collection of the former Tübingen “physiological-chemical institute” is located at today's Interfaculty Institute for Biochemistry of the University of Tübingen IFIB. Part of it can be seen in the permanent exhibition “Tübingen Castle Laboratory – Cradle of Biochemistry” at Hohentübingen Castle. Most of the objects in the collection date from the period between 1886 and 1964, when the institute was housed in Gmelinstraße. Among the more than 30 specimens that were created in the so-called “Schlosslabor” before 1886 is a test tube inscribed – in his own hand – by the physician and physiologist Friedrich Miescher (1844–1895), the discoverer of nucleic acid, the substance of DNA and RNA. It contains nuclein from salmon sperm and was made around 1871.