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DNA Pioneer Francis Crick Passes Away
Neil Halelamien writes "Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, passed away Wednesday in San Diego. His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness."
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Did he use his own, or watson's, DNA under the microscope to make the discovery?
Moo.
...that is, life arriving at earth via DNA sent out from aliens.
More on that theory in Wikipedia. Interesting stuff!
The Army reading list
Take a look at this link for some of what the parent is talking about:
n a.html
http://www.ba-education.demon.co.uk/for/science/d
http://nyamenation.org/
Crick didn't even know what Watson was doing the night that he made the mock-up. As an interesting note there was a bit of slack in the way the wooden "lego" was made that allowed the correct answer to emerge despite a slight flaw in the idea.
Lastly I think your joke was refering to Craig Venter that used his own DNA at Celera, Right?. I have a lot of respect for Venter despite his slight Megalomaniac tendencies.
Help fight continental drift.
In terms of making the discovery, Rosalind Franklin took pictures of the structure of DNA, Watson and Crick just looked at the pictures and deduced the structure. So I guess you could patent the picture taking process. Toodles.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
It seems to me, and this is totally a gut feeling, that the basic 'units of consciousness' will be in nueral superstructers. I'm actually a supporter of a top down approach -- trying to tear apart things that are apparent to us in our consciousness --Woah! How about getting a definition of consciousness first -- and then trying to find what neurons are responsible for them. We're had more success this way -- finding which parts of the brain light up when we use language, recognize faces, solve math problems, etc.
Furthermore, all the models of nuerons thinking use them as logic gates. That seems to imply to me that some consciousness researchers think the brain is a huge Turing machine -- again, this doesn't seem right to me, because Goedel's Theorem, as I understand, shows there are things a Turing machine can't compute. And if humans can understand Goedel's theorem, we must have something qualitatively different than a Turing machine up there.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Yes, I think they were right. In the 50 years since the first published postulate of the double helical structure a lot of work has been done (to say the least) that supports it.
I am by training a molecular biologist and I'm pretty sure that the 4 strand helix model does not support the techniques used during genetic engineering in which proteins are used to cut DNA leaving single stranded "sticky" ends that then reattatch to the inserted genes. The structure & function of at least some of these proteins is very well characterised.
Nor does 4 stranded DNA map as readily to tRNA which is single stranded.
Nor does 4 stranded map particularly well to the macro structure of DNA with the extra folding around histone proteins.
Yes DNA does not retain it's classical double helix all of the time. Often it is being repaired or replicated & is unfolded or it is stored in a highly dense packed format but the one to one corrolation between A-T & G-C plus the strong natural binding between the bases means that they probably did get it right.
All my knowledge is out of date by nigh on 20 years but I know enough to be confident that Rosie's results were interpreted correctly by Watson & Crick.
How does a 4 stranded helix give better corrolation to the results? You can't just say these things without giving evidence.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
We had some fabulous conversations about the nature of consciousness last summer in La Jolla, and he went on for hours and hours about the work his friend Christoff Koch was doing at Caltech - but the conversation was never about taking credit for ideas or who did what.
Wilkins went behind Rosalind Franklin's back and gave copies of her image data to James Watson. I don't believe that Crick even knew that he was looking at data without her permission. Regardless, he isn't the type of person to deny the credit she was due, nor to be shy about the fact that it was mostly he who deciphered the X-ray diffraction images. He was beyond uninterested in the politics side of science.
Like Dr. Crick, I studied physics and once thought I wanted to be a physicist. We discussed this, and I explained my reasons for not pursuing graduate studies these days, due to the excessive politics involved and the nature of funding, being beholden to a professor's interests and so on. And he agreed that if he were graduating from college today, he might feel the same way.
As for the "right bastard" part, like many scientists, and lots of people on Slashdot too, Dr. Crick was no social genius. He liked socializing with academics and people who would talk about ideas with him. But he always seemed to be a very decent person to me.
Goodbye to a truly great man. I met Dr. Crick twice. He was the only scientist I ever met who awed me so completely that I could never call him by his given name. Dr. Crick was involved in essentially every major breakthrough in molecular genetics between about 1955 and the end of the '60s. The structure of DNA, the "Central Dogma," triplet coding, as a very few high points among the accomplishments where his work was central. If you read "The Eighth Day of Creation," the breathtaking history of molecular genetics, you find that for those years it is largely a history of the work of Francis Crick. Following that, he nearly invented the new field of the analysis of the biological correlates fo consciousness. Truly a giant of intellectual achievement, I consider him one of the 5 greatest scientists to have ever lived. He was also a truly generous spirit. Both times I talked with him, he took a genuine interest in my work, discussed in detail my problem, and my experiments, and made serious and thoughtful comments on what I was doing. He didnt have to; I was a graduate student grinding away at what at that time looked like an obscure backwater project. He will be missed. I for one will be hoisting a couple in his honor over the next few days.