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."

Comments

Rosalind Franklin

[SUB7IME]

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!

Re:Rosalind Franklin

[shellbeach]

Well said ... I was going to mention her myself, but you beat me to it! It's worth noting that Rosalind didn't propose a model herself because she wanted to be sure that she had all the empirical evidence first - and that included the fact that DNA formed two different (A and B) conformations depending on the amount of water present - a fact that Watson and Crick never concerned themselves with (actually, there's a third conformation as well, the really kinky (literally) Z-DNA ... but nobody knew about that back then!)

So Watson and Crick did not do any experimental reseach, proposed a model based on Rosalind's unpublished results, never gave her any credit ... and, in the end, there was no conclusive proof that their modal was the correct model (in fact, it was Rosalind who provided that proof and improved on their model in the weeks following W&C's publication). Not to mention the fact that Watson performed an utterly dastardly character assasination on her in his book The Double Helix .... If it wasn't so tragic it'd almost be funny ...

But while we're at it, don't forget that along side Rosalind Franklin was Ray Gosling, a PhD student who did a lot of the work and never got any credit at all. Just like most PhD students, I might add :)

FWIW, the Brenda Maddox's bio of Rosalind Franklin is fantastic reading - probably the best biography of any scientist I have read. It is inspiring, moving and extremely well researched (especially when the author, AFAIK, had no science background before writing the book).

Re:As always,

[BornInASmallTown]

If you've not read it, The Double Helix is a great book that discusses the discovery from Watson's perspective. He covers his, Franklin's, Crick's, and Linus Paulings's involvement in a very interesting story. It's a short book, and well worth your time.

Watson rips on Franlin pretty hard in the book, but mainly because of personality conflicts. He acknowledges in the end that without her contributions, they wouldn't have achieved the same success.

Remember, they didn't discover DNA!

[ASquare]

...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

ABC's program on Rosalind Franklin

[ivi]

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_290 32003_2856.ram

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

Re:viruses are DNA?

[HarveyBirdman]

Some viruses use RNA.

Influenza, measles, mumps and polio are all RNA based viruses.

DNA viruses include herpes and hepatitis. I think HIV is a DNA type but I don't recall offhand.

Physics Today Article about Rosalind Franklin

[MacJedi]

There was a pretty good (and free) article about Rosalind Franklin in Physics Today last month that gives a good overview of her, her X-ray photographs, and her much discussed role in the discovery of DNA.

/joeyo