The Science Book

278 JAMES WATSON AND FRANCIS CRICK

I

n April 1953, the answer to

a fundamental mystery about

living organisms appeared in

a short article published without

fanfare in the scientific journal,

Nature. The article explained both

how genetic instructions are held

inside organisms and how they are

passed on to the next generation.

Crucially, it described, for the

first time, the double-helix

structure of deoxyribose nucleic

acid (DNA), the molecule that

contains the genetic information.

The article was written by

James Watson, a 29-year-old

American biologist, and his

older British research colleague,

biophysicist Francis Crick. Since

1951, they had jointly been working

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Biology

BEFORE

1869 Friedrich Miescher first

identifies DNA, in blood cells.

1920s Phoebus Levene and

others analyze the components

of DNA as sugars, phosphates,

and four types of base.

1944 Experiments show DNA

to be a carrier of genetic data.

1951 Linus Pauling proposes

the alpha-helix structure for

certain biological molecules.

AFTER

1963 Frederick Sanger

develops sequencing methods

to identify bases along DNA.

1960s DNA’s code is cracked:

three DNA bases of code for

each amino acid in a protein.

2010 Craig Venter and his

team implant artificially made

DNA into a living bacterium.

So beautiful it has to be true.

James Watson

on the challenge of DNA’s structure

at the Cavendish Laboratory,

University of Cambridge, under

its director, Sir Lawrence Bragg.

DNA was the hot topic of the

day, and an understanding of its

structure seemed so tantalizingly

within reach that by the early

1950s, teams in Europe, the US,

and the Soviet Union were vying

to be the first to “crack” DNA’s

three-dimensional shape—the

elusive model that allowed DNA

simultaneously to carry genetic

data in some kind of chemically

coded form, and to replicate

itself completely and accurately,

so that the same genetic data

was passed to offspring, or

daughter cells, including those

of the next generation.

The past in DNA

The DNA molecule was not

discovered in 1953, as is often

popularly thought, nor were Crick

and Watson the first to find out what

it was made from. DNA has a much

longer history of research. In the

1880s, the German biologist Walther

Flemming had reported that “X”-like

bodies (later named chromosomes)

appeared inside cells as the cells

James Watson and

Francis Crick

James Watson (on the right) was

born in 1928 in Chicago, IL.

At the precocious age of 15 he

entered the University of Chicago.

After postgraduate study in

genetics, Watson moved to

Cambridge, England, to team

up with Francis Crick. He later

returned to the US to work at the

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in

New York. From 1988, he worked

on the Human Genome Project,

but left after a disagreement over

patenting genetic data.

Francis Crick was born in 1916

near Northampton in Britain. He

developed antisubmarine mines

during World War II. In 1947,

he went to Cambridge to study

biology and here began work

with James Watson. Later, Crick

became known for the “central

dogma”: that genetic data flow

in cells in essentially one way. In

later life, Crick turned to brain

research and developed a theory

of consciousness.

Key works

1953 Molecular Structure of

Nucleic Acids: A Structure for

Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

1968 The Double Helix