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

Rosalind Franklin

[Hard_Code]

For those who didn't catch the Nova episode.

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant [female] scientist specializing in x-ray crystalography. It was Rosalind Franklin that identified two forms of DNA, and correlated their diffraction images with the helix shape. Watson and Crick were secretly, and intentionally passed Franklin's in-depth research (some would say "stole"). 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 (she was far ahead of Watson and Crick, while they were still fscking around with broken models). Watson went on to write The Double Helix, which slandered Franklin, to which even Crick objected. Franklin's paper on DNA was published in the same journal as two other papers (one of which was Watson/Crick's), AFTER the other two, and EDITED without her knowledge to imply that her research merely confirmed rather than provided the foundation for Watson's and Crick's work. 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.

Personally I think it is a damned shame. We should be celebrating Rosalind Franklin. Or at the VERY LEAST we should have (and should still) heard her name. Crick and Watson really come off as clueless chauvanistic assholes. Granted, a Nova episode is one data point, but usually their programs are really good, and I'd like to hear other opinions if other people know more about this issue.

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...