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Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick

Summary

'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid' is a one-page letter by James Watson and Francis Crick published in the journal Nature on 25 April 1953. In about nine hundred words and one simple diagram it proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information in living things. By the early 1950s scientists knew that DNA was made of long chains of sugar and phosphate groups with four kinds of bases attached: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Experiments had suggested that DNA, rather than protein, carried hereditary information, and the chemist Erwin Chargaff had found that the amounts of adenine and thymine, and of guanine and cytosine, were roughly equal. At King's College London, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin were studying DNA by X-ray diffraction, and in California Linus Pauling had proposed a three-chain structure that Watson and Crick believed to be wrong. Watson and Crick built models rather than doing experiments of their own. Their letter describes two helical chains coiled around the same axis and running in opposite directions, with the sugar-phosphate backbones on the outside and the bases on the inside. The chains are held together by hydrogen bonds between pairs of bases, adenine always with thymine and guanine always with cytosine. Because the pairing is specific, the sequence on one chain determines the sequence on the other. The authors noted briefly that this pairing immediately suggests a way the genetic material could be copied, a point they developed in a second paper a month later. The letter acknowledges that the authors were stimulated by the unpublished results and ideas of Wilkins, Franklin and their colleagues. It was printed together with two papers from King's College, one by Franklin and Raymond Gosling, presenting X-ray evidence. The double helix became the foundation of molecular biology, genetics and modern medicine.

Top Lessons

Model building
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Rosalind Franklin's data were shared with Watson and Crick without her knowledge. The story raises questions about honesty and fairness in science.
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Understatement
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Verified Quotes

“It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”

— James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick, Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, Nature 171 (1953), p. 737.

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Medical Lens

The structure of DNA underlies modern genetics and molecular medicine.

Heredity Degeneration

Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

Summary

Top Lessons

Model building

Credit and fairness

Understatement

For the Christian reader

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens