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

Aren't we forgetting someone?

[PhysicsGenius]

Rosalind Franklin, the co-discoverer who was shut-out by her chauvinist pig "colleagues". Please, Slashdot, don't perpetuate the evil.

Re:Aren't we forgetting someone?

[taliver]

chauvinist pig "colleagues"


Now, while I am not goin to say for certain it was or was not a sexist act to use her work and not give her credit, the link you point to does not really indicate more than simply despicable inter-academic rivalries-- I think they would have screwed over a guy in much the same way.

Remember, just because it happens to a woman doesn't mean the motive is at all sexist, much like if it happens to a black its racist or if it happens to a white guy it's justice.

Re:Aren't we forgetting someone?

[Fluffy the Cat]

Rosalind Franklin performed some important work that was ultimately built upon by Crick, Watson and Wilkins. Given more time she'd probably have reached the same conclusions, but the others got there first.

In science, the people who make the final discovery get more credit than the people who did the work that made this discovery possible. Chauvinism has nothing to do with it.

(On the other hand, Watson is one of the less pleasant people that I've had the poor fortune to meet)

Re:Aren't we forgetting someone?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Remember, just because it happens to a woman doesn't mean the motive is at all sexist, much like if it happens to a black its racist or if it happens to a white guy it's justice.

But when it happens to a woman in a highly sexist environment which is very nearly the definition of the "old boys' network," that's the way to bet. This is particularly true since Watson, at least, was a vicious sexist even by the standards of the time. To extend your analogy, it's like looking at the lynching of a black man by the KKK in 1950's Mississippi and saying, "Well, we don't know it was racist ..."

ages...

[Gamasta]

Well, this's been a long long time. There was that whole revolution in cell physiology in the 70s. Now we're on the computational part.

The human genome is read, but still we need to figure out: given a sequence of letters (out of the four), what protein (3-D structure, function, reactive parts etc) is associated with it? How is it cut into introns and exons? What sequence of letters can act as regulators? (without such answers I find the human genome project pretty useless)

Still, a Nobel well awarded to Watson and Crick, I'd say.

Re:Rather,

[tbmaddux]

50 years since the discovery of its structure.

Specifically the double-helical structure. Linus Pauling had done earlier theoretical work predicting the formation of helices, but wound up on the wrong track trying to make a triple-helix work for DNA.

and software makes the bioworld go round

[johnjones]

nice that DNA was discovered while stareing at Xrays now software does a good job

info: sanger center Cambridge was one of the centers that they helped sequence human DNA

why ? Because of the ability to patent squences of DNA
(that drug companies get rich off) they had to do it before evil companies did like Celera Genomics who used a more inactuate method (shotgun) but evily patented it

welcome trust is a huge Charity that funds research in this area

ptenting DNA is silly these are naturally occuring things (squences) they where not created just discovered its all very silly

Cuba and alot of africa are starting not to recognise these patents as they would like to build the drugs that help AIDS and HIV

its sad that AIDS and HIV has to come along just to show the world that patents are stupid on DNA

anyway

here is lots of software related to DNA

regards

John Jones

Not really correct

[reptilicus]

The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do? Franklin reportedly felt no slight, and remained friendly and corresponded with Watson and Crick through her remaining years. And yes, had she been alive, she would have been given the Nobel along with them, but the awards are not given posthumously.

Re:Not really correct

[RafeDawg]

The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do?

Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data.

Re:patents and DNA

[opello]

hehe, and instead of percieving introns as useless, they could stick little (C) and (TM)'s in there! It could be called, DNA2.0

Re:More on Rosalind Franklin

[Otter]

Supposedly the only reason this misconception has never been officially corrected was because the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.

On the contrary, if anything there's speculation that the Nobel committee waited for her to die so it was uncontroversial to award the prize to Watson, Crick and Wilkins. (There being a limit of three recipients.)

Basically, however much Franklin was overlooked at the time, overcompensation and political correctness have led to her contributions being overestimated now. She had data, so did a lot of people. She might have worked out the structure on her own; Pauling certainly would have. Fundamentally, Watson and Crick made the breakthrough others didn't and they deserve credit for it.

Re:50th anniversary rememberance..

[aluminum boy]

"Wrong" grossly understates the complexity of Franklin's interaction with Watson/Crick. She was neither wrong nor right. She was doggedly neutral in assessing the structure of DNA. Franklin was wrapped up in the notion that the structure of DNA could only be discovered through X-Ray diffraction, and not through using the modelling approach that Watson and Crick ascribed to. Was was very, very, correct, however, when she discovered that DNA has two states: "zipped" and "unzipped". That served as a direct catalyst to Watson and Crick's break through. That would have gotten her the Nobel Prize, also, if she had survived long enough (it cannot be awarded posthumously).

Re:50th anniversary rememberance..

[the gnat]

The NY Times article about this mentions that Watson asked Wilkins if he and Franklin should share co-authorship on the famous article, but that Wilkins declined (for both of them!). From what I've read, I always thought Wilkins was the real dickhead; he just assumed that Franklin was a subordinate, and treated her as such. It would not be the last time that a junior scientist has had his or her research stolen by their faculty advisor (though Franklin was not even working under Wilkins). I've heard of worse.

The real tragedy is the way Watson treated Franklin

No, the real tragedy is that she died of ovarian cancer in 1958. For her to have done as well as she did in that era, she clearly must have been absolutely brilliant. And she did great work after DNA too- Aaron Klug won the Nobel for a project that Franklin was working on when she died. Birkbeck College (where she ended up) has a page about her which says she should have won two Nobels, if not for her untimely death.