This paper examines how Arthur Kornberg instituted what he referred to as the “communal structure” of DNA research. It first chronicles Kornberg's growth as an influential biochemist with a particular emphasis on the material culture of his own laboratory. At one level he built his own research group, one that strongly focused on DNA as its research subject. At Kornberg’s newly established departments(first at the Microbiology Department at Washington University, St. Louis and then the Biochemistry Department at Stanford), DNA emerged as a material focus, and his colleagues worked on one of the central problems in molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s, namely the role of DNA in heredity. In part due to their focus on DNA, they developed a particular style of an experimental community by cultivating distinctive communal practices among its faculty members. By sharing laboratory space, research instruments and materials, and even monies, Kornberg tried to foster a research community with distinctive moral and political economies of science. As I show, Kornberg and his colleagues built a communal institution, which they believed to be crucial for sustaining the productivity and independence of their DNA research in the increasingly competitive world of biomedical research in the 1960s.