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DNA, Fifty Years To the Day
An anonymous reader writes "Today being the fiftieth anniversary (April 2, 1953) of the Watson-Crick double-helical, DNA discovery [to quote, 'We wish to put forward a radically different structure...'], there is an interesting tally of completed gene sequences here, and ones still being worked, including the Ames strain of the anthrax bacteria. It also appears that the only lifeforms not using DNA for code storage are a few viruses like the common cold."
It sure made a great subtitle for the last Solider Of Fortune2 game. ;-)
;-)
Seriously though, any future developments in this area of science will surely pave the way for a new novel from Michael Crichton.
Also today a new base pair was found. In addition to TA,AT,GC,CG the EV pair was found.
Scientists are calling this the EVIL PAIR. Finding this in DNA insures that the organism is PURE EVIL.
And I still don't have my army of genetically engineered Armadillo warriors.
The first 500 people to request one, will recieve their very own four-assed monkey.
To quote the gerbil in the microwave (after being zapped, popped, and reduced to an eyeball) -- "Give it up for DNA!"
...will it be another fifty years before I can grow a custom pet?
My real spider monkey can't wait that long to meet the world. Oooo AH AH AHHH!!!!
Seriously, happy 50th, DNA!
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
Let's not forget Rosalind Franklin - the woman who actually took the X-ray photographs of the DNA molecule. Without her, Watson and Crick would not have been able to discern the DNA structure!
have eliminated the troll-genes back then, before it became too late...
Everyone forgets Rosalind Franklin. She was the first person to actually physically see the molecule. Watson and Crick would have been nowhere without her.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
quote: "It also appears that the only lifeforms not using DNA for code storage are a few viruses like the common cold."
Does that mean that NT admins considered a virus since they use hard drives for code storage, opposed to DNA.
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
Click here for video of the anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA. This was taped at Cold Springs Harbor Lab, where Watson is currently the director. Also, you can find their original paper that was published in Nature annoucing the discovery. It's interesting to note that since their discovery of DNA's double-helical structure, neither Watson nor Crick have discovered or published anything significant since then.
In honor of the birthday I'm going to make a a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting ;-)
It's only been a month since the last 50th anniverary...
DNA 50th Anniversary (BBC Story)
"For instance, when compared to a computer file, the simplest of plant viruses (called viroids) contains a miniscule 240 'bits' of information to sustain their circular chromosome. "
Well I find it interesting to compare this with a computer virus which is nuthing but a software program (usually larger than 240 bits). Which makes me wonder, if we can create a virus... can we someday create a more sophisticated life form?
But virii *do* use DNA for code storage, and the article had absolutely nothing to contradict that.
What the article said is that prions do not use DNA for code storage. Prions != virii.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
..robbed of her credit and too dead to fight the point: more details here
Posthumously slagging off the person who gifted him a Nobel about her dress sense, what a wanker!
The government has finally collected a sample from every citizen for the TIA database.
...they only described it's structure. The discovery of DNA goes back to at least 1929, possibly earlier (depending on which discovery you're looking for.)
1865 - Gregor Mendel shows that heredity is passed in discreet units
1900 - Three scientists independently verify Mendel's work, and formulate the laws of heredity
1909 - Willhelm Johannsen coins the term gene
1911 - Thomas Hunt Morgan shows that chromosomes contain genes
1929 - Phoebus Levin discovers that genes are made up of nucleotides (i.e., genes are made up of DNA)
1943 - William Astbury obtains first X-ray diffraction pictures of DNA
1951 - Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction images show DNA has two different forms, and that it takes the form of a helix
1953 - Watson and Crick formulate their model
Here's a brief NPR review of a recent biography of Rosalind Franklin and a more extensive review in Scientific American which details the theft of data by Watson/Crick/Wilkins.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
That thing about some viruses not using DNA is sort of missleading....they use RNA instead which is really similar to DNA. They are called retro viruses....i am not sure about the commen cold being one though...it was my understanding that the first retro virus to be discovered (they had theroised about their exixtance before discovery) was the HIV virus. Anyway I could be wrong.
hook
My favorite quote from The Double Helix, by James Wastson was regarding Rosalyn Franklin.
"...that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab."
Article about Rosalyn, a female scientist who made contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA but because she was a woman her contributions were largly ignored.
And no, her research was not stolen, it was shown to Watson who than took those ideas to hypothesize a structure.
"It also appears that the only lifeforms not using DNA for code storage are a few viruses like the common cold."
I was under the impression that viruses were just floating pieces of DNA that get into a cell and reprogram it to produce more of those strands of DNA. How can you say viruses are not using DNA when that is basically what they are? (or else high-school biology has taught me wrong).
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
that Rosalind Franklin rarely gets any acclaim for her work. Watson and Crick built the model of DNA on here shoulders.
Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
Here's a lot more of the story of her work:
Book Talk on "The Dark Lady of DNA..."
[Broadcast on Saturday 29 March 2003]
Listen via Audio on Demand from:
www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/booktalk/audio/booktalk_29
Brenda Maddox on why the young English biophysicist Rosalind Franklin was never to know how vital her own work was to Francis Crick and James Watson's discovery of 'the secret of life.'
The biographer of D.H. Lawrence, W.B. Yeats and Nora Barnacle, James Joyce's wife, Brenda Maddox talks about her life of Rosalind Franklin at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.
See also:
"The Dark Lady Of DNA"
Author: Brenda Maddox/Rosalind Franklin
Publisher: Harpercollins
Interestingly enough, Douglas N. Adams (DNA) of Hitchhikers' Guide fame, was also born in 1952 (March, not April).
Intercarve Networks, LLC
This story was also covered in this month's Smithsonian magazine and was a decent read.
Now if they could only create a DNA custom engineered beowulf cluster of atomic supermen...
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Now only if they were to find a way to fit the shrunken glove....
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
DNA....How quaint!
Sincerely,
Superbot 5000
(Your silicon-based descendant from the year 5000)
So viruses are considered "alive" now?
begin 644
Discreet - Free from ostentation or pretension; modest.
Discrete - Consisting of unconnected distinct parts.
I dont think Mendel meant to say that the passing is done in a modest fashion.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Except that the link posted in the post is for microbial genomes only. There are a lot of other genomes that have sequenced. NCBI is better place to look for this info.
m e
Here is the *definitive* page for completed genomes:
http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Geno
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Douglas Noel Adams
born March 11th, 1952
died May 11th, 2001
I know, different DNA, but hey...
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
One could construct a two-tape turing machine that simulates the four combinations; if you're interested in mixing computer science with DNA, check out this paper.
Everything serves as part of something bigger anyways.
"Dr. Watson, will you please comment a little on the role and contributions of Dr. Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the structure of the DNA?"
... that DNA was just a late college April Fools joke and the original pranksters simply haven't had the heart to let the world know it's being made fun of.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
This bit proves that he is an EVIL PERSON.
(He's a little bit evil.)
why did they have that big shin-dig over at the eagle in cambridge a few weeks ago?
I bet it was really discovered on April 1st, but they were worried that /. would post 5 copies of the discovery.
DNA is credited to the inception of genetic algorithms. The main idea behind genetic algorithms is the emulatation of natural selection and evolution by means of DNA manipulation. This is accomplished by many DNA manipulation techniques; the two most prominent are crossover, where two different chromosomes swap DNA information, and genetic mutation, where a random [DNA] bit is rotated. If you're interested in genetic algorithms, check out this introduction.
Whatever you think of the politics of the announcement, it was first made public in The Eagle, which is still a local pub in Cambridge, and worth a visit if you're in town. It's a little over-commercialised (it was a major hang-out for USAF folks in WWII, and gets more than its fair share of tourists), but it's still a good pub.
/joeyo
2^5
Did Watson and Crick wait until April 2, 1953 so that people couldn't dismiss their new-fanged double-helix stuff as an April Fool's joke?
I was thinking about this very subject the other day.
It seems strange to me that while, in principle, the discovery of the structure of DNA was a wonderful thing, it doesn't seem to have affected the average person's life very much. Far less, it seems, then Dr. Fleming's noticing that bread mold contamination was killing his bacterial cultures.
Perhaps I'm missing something, and understanding the structure of DNA is contributing more than I think. But, it occurs to me that if we could put a man on the moon in about 10 years, we ought to be able to do something more with DNA in 50 years.
I suspect that science has become too bureaucratized and institutionalized to know which end is up anymore.
Sigh.
"But virii *do* use DNA for code storage..."
No they don't. At least not all of them. Some Virii use only RNA.
..but the plural of virus is viruses or (to use the Latin form) viri. More generally, the plural of a Latin noun ending with -us is -i, although in modern English it's OK to use English plural.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I bet nobody took them seriously for a week afterwards!!
/. to overdo the April fools day).
Or probably people believed more those days (there was no
Wouldn't this story have been more appropriately placed unter the biotech topic?(hint, check the icon)
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
the April Fools Day tradition. Those poor guys never thought they'd be right.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
1. Find obvious article to whore in.
2. Skim the summary.
3. Reply and title your post "In other news..."
4. Take premise of article and twist it into something obviously absurd. Make sure it is not clever, original, or funny in any way.
5. Wait for dull, crackhead moderators with itchy mouse fingers to click it up into the various realms of Funny That Is Not.
I will either be modded down, someone will post another "step" to my list that references responses like mine, or some Anonymous Coward will copy my style as they usually do.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Of course, let us not forgot that Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge nine months before the other DNA formulation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Are you 12 years old or just a dumbass?
I didn't RTFA, but I would have thought that DNA had been around for more than 50 years.
Go figure.
I heard in a Genetics conference yesterday from a man named Sam Rhine that the aniversary was on the 25th and thats why the human genome project has changed its target completion date to April 25 2003 because it would be exactly 50 years later (this was a date set by groups of hopeful geneticists at the start of the project but not the original offical date) Im gonna check my notes or a recording of the lecture to verify this but it is correct to the best of my beliefs
Bottles.
Also today a new base pair was found. In addition to TA,AT,GC,CG the EV pair was found.
Scientists are calling this the EVIL PAIR. Finding this in DNA insures that the organism is PURE EVIL.
qslack.com
Well, technically viruses, like the common cold, are not considered lifeforms.
HIV is a retrovirus. It's genetic information encoded in RNA. It caries an enzyme that converts this RNA to DNA which is then inserted into the host cell genome.
They would have discovered it one day earlier. Then we would all be going around wondering if it was some really cool April Fools Day joke ;-)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Happy 50!
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I thought viruses used to be considered non-living since they could not reproduce on their own... They hae to use their host's cellular machinary to reproduce.
But perhaps the thinking on this has changed...
If you are interested in learning about the abusive mistreatment of women researchers look no further than The Double Helix.
This happened in the programming field as well. The first computer programmers were women. When photographs of the ENIAC were first taken, people would assume that the six women standing next to the racks flipping switches was just there for show. Betty Holberton was actually one of the programmers for the mother of all computers. Interesting short article in Science & Technology by Rachel K. Sobel. Forgot the issue.
There is also an interesting biography on Rosalind Franklin by Brenda Maddox as well.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
...it was one day late for april fools...
-=fshalor
RNA has been demonstrated to have enzyme-like properties in many cases, in some cases even being able to cleave itself if spliced properly. There are more than a few organisms storing information on means other than DNA though few do so exclusively. And for those who doubt, Ms. Franklin's work was most certainly pirated by Crick, Watson, and wilkins. Had this same situation occured today, Ms. Franklin could easily have defeated them in court for theft of intellectual property. Crick was a 10th year PhD student whose previous explorations into whale hemoglobin hadn't led to as much as hoped while Watson was a Harvard postdoc looking for his first breakthrough. At least Wilkins already had a working laboratory, but this does not excuse their actions. Without Franklin's picture, it would have been months or years before the structure would be correctly elucidated (remember, people like Linus Pauling were trying models at that time which included 3-part helices with nucleotides sticking away from the phosphate bonds, etc.)
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I think there has actually been some controversy that Watson stole a lot of the concept from someone else... of course i may just be talking out my ass, look it up if you're interested.
the famous Ada Lovelace, the world's very first computer programmer. Back when Babbage's analytical engine was just an idea she was already writing programs for it.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
And what about the fact that three years ago scientists reached 45+ years awaited consensus that DNA:
1) is never only double-stranded, but it can be single, double and triple strand
2) is never simetrical double helix, but always a bit skew
3) does not have 2 and 3 links between bases, but only (always) 2 links between purins and pirimidins.
If anyone still cares, science is about understanding things as they are, not as we would like them to be.
Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
When someone makes Formula-1221 and every criminal
and dictator wants it. Time to strap on the brass
knuckles, get the chains and collars ready, and
form the slave army to get it!
Who wouldn't like to see the discussions on this, now?
Enig? Det alt for hot det smor!
Please note that the actual date of the discovery was February, 28, 1953. Not April, 2nd, when it was first published.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
1. Find obvious article to whore in.
2. Skim the summary.
3. Reply and title your post "In other news..."
4. Take premise of article and twist it into something obviously absurd. Make sure it is not clever, original, or funny in any way.
5. Wait for dull, crackhead moderators with itchy mouse fingers to click it up into the various realms of Funny That Is Not.
I will either be modded down, someone will post another "step" to my list that references responses like mine, or some Anonymous Coward will copy my style as they usually do.
Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin's discovery of DNA.
I don't understand how you can attain super-star-scientist status just for discovering a new chemical.
I understand that DNA is supposed to be the programming code of almost every known "life" form (where life is considerable larger set than what most people think).
However, discovering that there is such a thing, and discovering the actual chemicals that make up such a thing, is as important as discovering that wires tend to conduct electricrity well.
The person who is able to actually decode the DNA code, and create any life form, will be the true super-star scientist.
I also think people overestimate the meaning of DNA. To some, it proves evolution. But to others, it is yet another example of an intelligent design (hence, designed by an intelligent being) of the universe around us.
I mean, if you were God, wouldn't you write a code that could be used to program up any animal imaginable?
So to me, the existence of something like DNA just reinforces my belief in God and the creation.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I think that the anniversary is actually 25th April, national DNA day, this year! http://gslc.genetics.utah.edu/features/dnaday/ Talking of DNA code I have mine! I stored it and got it done with a cool product I got at http://www.catgee.com
I may be coming at this with some out of date knoledge, but when I did my Biochemistry MSc there were several bacteria (Prokaryotes) that had RNA Genomes.
Please can you at least try to get fundamental facts right in your articles.
If you don't know the answer to a problem, research it don't guess.
HT
--
http://www.extropia.com/tutorials/dna/toc.html
couldn't resist
http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/issues/Comsci98/comp
It's an account of how the DNA code was 'cracked', the next major problem after the structure was solved, from the point of view of a computer science writer ( "What fascinated me about the code-breaking effort was how quickly a biochemical puzzle--the relation between DNA structure and protein structure--was reduced to an abstract problem in symbol manipulation.").
Among the two major viral classes, they are either rod-shaped or have a quasi-spherical shape termed an icosahedron. Similar to a miniature soccer ball, the icosahedron is composed of 5-sided and 6-sided faces (pentamers and hexamers).
This is a truncated icosahedron. The one formed with pentagons and hexagons is special because it's the roundest polyhedron possible with this number of faces or vertices, which probably has something to do with the success of this shape in virii.
An icosahedron is formed of 20 triangles and 12 vertices.
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
All he said was that sun exposure may be linked with sexual drive and that obesity lowers charisma. The former was a valid speculation based on statistical evidence, the latter is obvious to anyone even though nobody wants to admit it openly. And so what if he showed some pictures of scantily clad women to illustrate his point? If scantily clad pictures were demeaning to women, bikinis would not have been all that popular. Nobody is forcing women to dress sexy; they dress sexy because they want to, and to suggest otherwise is indeed sexist.
Oddly, cell phones were invented exactly 20 years after the discovery of DNA!
Kinda makes one wonder, huh?
Watson and Crick did not come up with the concept of the 3 base codon. That was Crick and Sydney Brenner. To learn more, read this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0879 696362/qid=1049381159/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-967590 7-2981552?v=glance&s=books
He spoke at Berkeley and many faculty members walked out on his talk because it was simultaneously offensive and had no data. A piece on this in the Chronicle mentioned this walkout and the faculty members who admitted to walking out received hate mail from people who read it.
Go to pubmed and look at Crick's publication record and then Watson's. See for yourself.
Not necessarily, there are some biological differences between different racial groups (which is why we have different races in the first place). A biological influence may be restricted to humans of asian descent, for instance, which will exclude all cultures created by people of other races. Furthermore, cultural influence may go both ways, either enhancing or inhibiting the effect; just because it is not visible, does not mean it is not there.
If you do not generalize, you can not think. The only way of acquiring knowledge is by generalizing from specific data and creating higher-level concepts. When we create stereotypes for people of a specific race, or gender, or occupation, we do so by generalizing on the information available to us. Some of this information may be incorrect, some of it may be correct, and the validity of the stereotype depends on that. So when you meet a woman and think "she's a female, and is probably bad at math", you are simply changing your expectation levels based on previous experience of meeting women who were bad at math (God knows I've met a lot of those, and only three who were not). People who complain about stereotypes should instead complain about their causes. Black people should complain about the stupid and ignorant black people who hang out on the steets selling drugs, terrorizing their 'hood, and generally caring about nothing but living through yet another miserable day. It is they who create the impression that all black people are "animal scum" or worse, and the intelligent and successful members of the race suffer for it. (The 'hood culture, incidentally, is that of poverty, not of race. Poor white people hang out there too, but there always seems to be more poor blacks than poor whites for some reason)
Look at the nudist clubs. They wear nothing at all for reasons that have nothing to do with sex.
This argument comes from a typically socialist attitude that people should be protected from themselves. If she is hurting herself in the long run (with which I would disagree, since by learning the male reaction to such clothes she would gain valuable experience on how to [or how not to] get what she wants), it is nobody's business but hers. Every person must own his life if he is to have a life in the first place. If you insist on living his life for him, you deprive him of his most valuable posession, of existance.
This will only happen if she truly lacks any other distinguishing qualities and talents. Nobody gets turned down on a job interview for looking go