The Double Helix
Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Francis Crick died last Wednesday. He, along with Dr. Watson, was Watson and Crick the bane of my Biochemistry Degree (along with many other researchers). These two discovered the shape of the double helix in DNA - with help from Dr. Roslyn Franklin. There is a lot of controversy (well as much as the biochemistry world can muster up) over the events of Watson and Crick receiving the prize. There were many researchers at the time, who were each coming up with very possible structures - many people think Watson and Crick simply used the ideas from other people and submitted their ideas first. For example Roslyn Franklin did all the x-ray crystallography work, which is the closest thing you could get to a "picture" of the DNA. Chargoff came up the A=T G=C base pairing rules. British researchers put the entire thing together but inside out. Watson and Crick saw this model and realized that the phosphate had to go on the outside with the bases on the inside (the model we are all familiar with) rebuilt the model and submitted it to Science (or was it Nature) magazine. "Their" discovery was then nominated to win the Nobel Prize. They won but many people participated in discovery what now plays a central role in the lucrative fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering.
posted by Angela @ 9:35 a.m.
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