50th Anniversary of DNA's Discovery

nxg125 writes "The New York Times has a section on the 50th anniversary of Watson & Crick's discovery of DNA. Lots of good articles about the discovery, Watson & Crick themselves, and where this information will take us from here."

Comments

Rather,

[Black Parrot]

50 years since the discovery of its structure.

Re:Rather,

[Milo Fungus]

And to nitpick even further, Watson and Crick didn't discover the structure. They formulated a model for the structure which was the first to accurately describe all of the scientific observations made up to that time. X-ray crystallography couldn't get high enough resolution to unambiguously prove the model for another few decades. At the time they proposed the model, there was not sufficient data to be absolutely certain about its accuracy. In other words, they did some masterful guesswork. The remarkable thing about W&C's original model was how accurate it was.

Dr. Crick later postulated the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that DNA is replicated for inheritance, is transcribed to RNA, and that RNA is translated to protein. The central dogma is now well-established, but was certainly not when Crick proposed it. The role of RNA in protein synthesis was rather foggy at the time. Crick was a remarkable scientist who certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. The field of molecular biology has benefitted immeasureably from his contributions.

The same goes for Linus Pauling. W&C beat him to the DNA structure, but he made some great contributions to the field nonetheless. Pauling's DNA structure was based upon the protonated form of DNA - where the phosphodiester backbone is electrically neutral. There is actually a -1 charge on phosphates in DNA, which is one of the reasons why the backbone wraps around the outside of the molecule. In his triple helix model the backbone was on the inside of the molecule, with the bases pointing out. This would made sense if the phophates were neutral, because they wouldn't repel each other. Having the bases on the outside also made sense because if the information was contained in the bases, then they ought to be accessible. He also had the wrong tautomeric forms of the bases, so the base pairing with hydrogen bonds wouldn't work properly. His was a good model. He was doing some good work. Just barking up the wrong tree.

Pauling's greatest contributions were in protein structure. He proposed the alpha helix secondary structural element, which is found everywhere in proteins. If folding@home makes any progress whatsoever, they are building on the work of Linus Pauling.

end nitpick;

50th anniversary rememberance..

[cosmic_whiner]

How come it's always only Watson and Crick - why dont people remember Maurice Wilkins (who shared the nobel prize with them) and Rosalind Franklin (who's pathbreaking Xray work led to the double helix)

Re:50th anniversary rememberance..

[Uart]

because franklin was wrong. her x-ray diffraction worked, but she concluded that the nitrogenous bases were on the outside of the molecule..

Watson and Crick built a worable model, including complementary base-pairing, and they went on to describe the semiconservative method of DNA synthesis (which of course was shown to be valid).

Rosalind certainly derserves credit for her work with x-ray diffraction (and she gets it), but she didn't give the world a model of what DNA looks like

More about Rosalind Franklin

[Aces and Eights]

According to this review of her biography she was the woman who produced the x-ray data that most strongly supported the DNA structure but was not properly acknowledged for her contributions.

That reveiw further goes on to say that... According to Watson's best-selling 1968 account of the great race, The Double Helix, Franklin was not even a contender, much less a major contributor. He painted her as a mere assistant to Wilkins who "had to go or be put in her place" because she had the audacity to think she might be able to work on DNA on her own. Worse yet, she "did not emphasize her feminine qualities," lamented Watson, who refers to her only as "Rosy." "The thought could not be avoided," he concluded, "that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab."

Sounds like Watson was *quite* the ladies man =)

Now it's time to work out the folding...

[MarvinMouse]

Personally, I think everyone should join folding@home

http://folding.stanford.edu

now this is a distributed project that's producing results.

DNA is useful, and was an excellent discovery, but it's kinda like discovering the motherboard, and not understanding how any of the information is transmitted. Folding at home allows anyone with spare computer cycles to help out and understand how the proteins fold to their lowest/near lowest energy state and how they interact in the body.

Already some medical advances have been made, but there's still a long way to go.

Re:Now it's time to work out the folding...

[Zathrus]

Or, alternately, UD Cancer Research -- pretty much the same as Folding@Home, but with an emphasis on cancer cures.

Not that Folding@Home isn't after equally noble goals. Just giving options.

One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

Grid appears to be running a few other... interesting... projects as well. There's the Smallpox Project, designed to find a Smallpox counteragent, and the PatriotGrid, which is hopes to find counteragents/vaccines/whatever against a wide variety of bioterrorist agents.

I think I'll stick with Cancer research.

Re:Aren't we forgetting someone?

[richie2000]

From the NYTimes page:

50 Years Later, Rosalind Franklin's X-Ray Fuels Debate
By DENISE GRADY
For some, over the years, Dr. Rosalind Franklin has come to symbolize the plight of women in science, as men close ranks against them.

Fifty years ago, a casual gesture at a laboratory in London became a defining moment in the history of science. James D. Watson was visiting King's College late one afternoon near the end of January 1953, when a researcher named Maurice Wilkins showed him an X-ray photograph of a molecule of DNA.

Describing the encounter years later in "The Double Helix," Dr. Watson wrote, "The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race."

The image was one of many by various researchers that hinted at a helix, but its singular clarity helped lead Dr. Watson and his colleague Francis Crick to the structure of DNA.

The scientist who took the picture was Dr. Rosalind Franklin, and though they cited other work she had done, Dr. Watson and Dr. Crick did not acknowledge the photograph itself, or additional work by her they had used, in their paper.

Re:DNA Decode

[CuOsc]

Nature (where the Watson and Crick paper was published) is running something on this:
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/

The page has links to all the original 1953 articles.

No Password

[SkreamNet]

Google Link

More on Rosalind Franklin

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a med school student who very recently studied the discovery of DNA structure in great detail. When this student described the story to me it seemed less like Watson&Crick and Rosalind Franklin were equal contributors to the current perception of DNA structure, and more that they pretty much stole all of her work.
Supposedly the only reason this misconception has never been officially corrected was because the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.

Life Story

[stroudie]

A while back (~1987) the bbc produced a drama-documentary called "Life Story: a double helix", about the discovery of DNA (starring Tim Piggot-Smith & Jeff Goldblum).

If you get the opportunity (it has been shown a number of times on US and UK TV), it is worth seeing as a very fair-minded and interesting history of the discovery. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is available on video, unless anyone knows different.

Re:Life Story

[reptilicus]

Available from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. It is not cheap, but comes with a license for public showing. http://www.cshlpress.com

Other points of interest

[reptilicus]

Nature has a whole section on the 50th Anniversary: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/index.html Also, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (which is run by Watson) is holding a meeting starting Wednesday night to celebrate the anniversary. The whole thing is supposed to be streamed live over the web for free. Not sure of the exact link for this, but the general site is: http://www.cshl.org/ And their 50th Anniversary site is: http://www.dna50.org/main.htm

The Energizer Bunny of Genetics

[mshultz]

I like this part (from NYT- my school, Rice University, gives us the NYT at breakfast every morning!)...

Dr. Crick published an article on the nature of consciousness just this month.

Dude, what a beast this guy is! Still going! Has anybody found this article new article of his? It would be neat to read...

Re:and software makes the bioworld go round

[Fluffy the Cat]

Because of the ability to patent squences of DNA

No. You can't patent sequences of DNA. You can only patent potential uses of that DNA. So, the use of BRCA2 in a diagnostic test for predisposition to breast cancer is patented in much the same way that a test for the protein it produces being used for a diagnostic test for predisposition to breast cancer could be patented (and probably is).

Biotechnology companies do, however, take the piss here. Upon finding a gene and gaining some idea about its function, they have a tendancy to file several hundred patents covering every possible uesful application of that gene.

Re:DNA Decode

[pgolik]

Start there The NCBI site also has a FTP repository, where you can download the raw files. And here you can get a nice open software suite to work on it.

Re:Not really correct

[reptilicus]

---Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data--- Clearly you're not a scientist if you think things really work this way. Go to any meeting and you'll see people furiously taking notes, then running out to use their cel phones to call their labs... Regardless, Franklin's data was published in her own paper in the very same issue of Nature. (see http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html to view the originals). Do you think she would have been better served as a junior author on Watson and Crick's paper describing model building that she had no part of, or publishing as the first author on a paper showing her own work?

The original model

[RDW]

If you're in London you can see the original structural model of DNA (retort clamps and all), models of several other significant molecules, some early computers, and the Apollo 10 command module (!) all in one gallery at the Science Museum:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

DNA structure

Re:Watson and Crick, or ?

[holy zarquon's singi]

Rosalind Franklin was responsible for the X-Ray Crystallography. Her work was under attributed and some say plagiarised by Watson and Crick. She certainly did not get the credit for her work, and some beleive she should have shared in the nobel prize. To be fair, her boss/supervisor was implicit in this, and not just Watson/Crick, although Watson should not have bad-mouthed her the way he did.