Guanine CytosineWatson and Crick’s brief paper turned out to be one of the most
impactful publications in the history of science and was the major
event in founding the field of what is now called molecular biology.
They concluded their paper with the following sentence, sometimes
considered one of the great understatements in the history of biology:
“It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have pos-
tulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the
genetic material.” In other words: Oh, by the way, we have solved how
genetic information is encoded in cells and passed on from one gen-
eration to the next—the molecular basis of the gene and the physical
basis for inheritance. The details still needed to be worked out, but the
basic scheme was now understood.