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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."
The first 500 people to request one, will recieve their very own four-assed monkey.
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...
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 ;-)
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.
...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.
Watson and Crick wouldn't have accomplished much without Chargoff's data either. Chargoff recognized that A and T and G and C were in rougly a 1:1 ratio (# purines = # pyrimidines). Watson and Crick would've been screwed without alot of outside help. For example, they couldn't figure out why their model wasn't coming together. A chemist happened to be walking by one day and pointed out that oxygen is found in the keto, rather than enol form and nitrogen was found in the amino rather than the imino form (in living systems). Crick was a physicist and Watson was more of a general biologist.
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
If you are interested in learning about the abusive mistreatment of women researchers look no further than The Double Helix.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
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.
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.
--- Ban humanity.
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.
/joeyo
2^5
Like so many other things, the Simpsons have been predicting this for years. And without duplicates, too.
Lionel Hutz: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to prove to you not only that Freddy Quimby is guilty, but that he is also innocent of not being guilty. I refer you to my expert witness, Dr. Hibbert.
Hibbert: Well, only one in two million people has what we call the "evil gene". (holds up a card showing DNA) Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it, and Freddy Quimby has it. (chuckles)
Hutz: Thank you, Dr. Hibbert. I rest my case.
Judge: You rest your case?
Hutz: What? Oh no, I thought that was just a figure of speech. Case closed.
Experts agree: everything is fine.
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."
Pauling did publish a proposed structure for DNA a few weeks before W&C's paper (in fact, it was his publication that drove them to have another shot at model building) - but Pauling's model was attrocious. Like W&C's first attempt, it was a triple helix with the phosphates on the inside, not on the outside (a fact which, incidentally, was demonstrated by Franklin a year before).
But, W&C or Pauling would have certainly figured it out much faster if they had access to her information.
I don't know what you're talking about here - W&C did have access to her data, without her knowledge or permission - and it was the only way they could propose a model. To put it simply, her oft-reprinted photo was the supreme evidence that the B-form of DNA was a helix.
And Rosalind Franklin (and Ray Gosling, her PhD student) were very, very close to solving the structure, not only of the B-form of DNA but also of the dehydrated A-form of the molecule. They had recognised that both forms were a double helix and had come close to recognising the significance of the the Chargraff ratios of base-pairs at the time of W&C's publication. Their only "failing" was that they wanted to make sure that any model they proposed was in fact the correct one by having X-ray crystallographic data to support it. W&C never cared about any of that, and never bothered to check whether their model was accurate. That's why they "figured it out faster"!