Double Helix: 50 Years of DNA

Dr from the Source writes "Despite previous posts, tomorrow (April 25, 2003) is the real 50th anniversary of the publication of the famous paper by J. D. Watson and F. Crick in the Nature journal. Readers can download such paper, along with a few other classic ones from Nature's archive."

Comments

Hershey & Chase (then) forward engineering (no

[airuck]

Then:
I believe Watson and Crick's solution to DNA structure was a fabulous achievement, but press should also be given to Hershey and Chase's 1952 experiment proving DNA as the genetic material. Of course, they too rested on the shoulders of giants in chemistry and biology, but their work has equal claim to initiating an era of reverse engineering hereditary mechanisms.

Now:
Biology has come a long way reverse engineering life, but still has a long way to go. Unlike systems composed of similar components interacting to create a complex and often unpredictable outcome, life is composed of a huge variety of components which can interact to create stable outcomes (homeostasis). As we identify the individual components and subsystems, a new field is emerging. This field, called systems biology, is about modeling this complexity.

Now/Next:
Perhaps most exciting, there now exists enough information to begin forward engineering life. In living systems we have the ultimate collection of both components and subsumption architectures for making complex systems. Rodney Brooks was brilliant for modeling his robots after living systems, but a living system can be the starting point for further engineering. This work has begun, but consists mostly as limited applied science with pharmaceutical, agricultural, or industrial enzyme goals. Is anyone (else) engineering life for the sake of engineering?

Re:Rosalind Franklin

[Vellmont]

I saw the Nova special, and found it to be extremely biased.

If Franklin had not died of cancer (probably due to working so much with radiation) at such a young age she would have undoubtedly presented the discovery of the helix nature of DNA

Franklin died 4 or 5 years after the publication of the Nature article, so she had plenty of time to publish anything related to her DNA work.

Watson went on to write The Double Helix, which slandered Franklin, to which even Crick objected.

Crick objected to how he was portrayed in the book, so I don't see how this applies. As far has Watsons portrayal of Franklin, I think it only shows he's a sexist dick. (And reportedly still is). Should Watson have cleaned everything up and not been honest about his attitudes toward Franklin? At least now we have a historical picture from one persons perspective about the atmosphere surrounding the discovery of DNAs structure. Taken in context it's a great book that I'd recommend to anyone.

After being made so miserable working at the same lab with Watson and Crick, she went on to other things briefly virus research, in which her partner, surprise again, also won a Nobel prize.

Well, I don't know anything about her being made miserable, but she died before she was able to confirm her virus work. Nobel prizes are always awarded many years after someone has done the work and after it's been widely accepted by the scientific community. It's also only awarded to living people, and only shared by three. Franklink died in 1958. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the Nobel in 1962. I don't know which nobel prize was awarded to her colleague, but my guess is she was dead by the time it was awarded.

I'm actually surprised at how biased the Nova episode was. It made it sound like Franklin did all the work, while Watson and Crick came along took her research, cobbled together a model and published it. Franklin is portrayed as this poor innocent women taken advantage of by the evil Watson and Crick. Especially ridiculous is the line at the end: Franklin died "with no sense of having been edged out in a race that only Watson and Crick knew was a race." There were many people researching the DNA structure around the world, including two time Nobel winner Linus Pauling. If Franklin didn't know this was a race, she was either delusional, or stupid. I don't think she was either, which makes me extremely suspicious of the motives of the author of the book on which this Nova was based. Franklin probbably deserves more credit than she got, but the Nova special was out to make a martyr of her for sexism in science. This is made quite a bit easier because of her early death.

Not enough data

[roberto0]

The actual article is funny because they never would have gotten it published if they didn't propose the mechanism for DNA replication in the same breath.

At the time, crystallography was something geologists did in order to study the composition of rocks. The idea of using xrays to study the crystal patterns of biological molecules was really new at the time. Franklin deserves credit for being innovative in that regard. The real credit that Watson and Crick deserve was that once Crick saw that the structure was a double helix, they were able to put together a decent model for DNA replication. Something people had only guessed about before. Their model wasa still a guess, at best, but they turned out to be right!

The funny part about the whole thing is that the diffraction pattern that they analyzed was no bigger than your fingernail. The picture in the Nature article has actually been blown up from its original size, if you can believe that. Kind of scary how something so important could have been determined by studying something so blurry and small...