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Biotech Science

50th Anniversary of DNA's Discovery 161

Posted by CmdrTaco from the spiriling-coild-of-self-replicating-dna dept.
nxg125 writes "The New York Times has a section on the 50th anniversary of Watson & Crick's discovery of DNA. Lots of good articles about the discovery, Watson & Crick themselves, and where this information will take us from here."
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50th Anniversary of DNA's Discovery More

50th Anniversary of DNA's Discovery

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  • Rather, (Score:5, Informative)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:25AM (#5378380)


    50 years since the discovery of its structure.

    • Re:Rather, (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:41AM (#5378462) Homepage Journal
      50 years since the discovery of its structure.
      Specifically the double-helical structure. Linus Pauling had done earlier theoretical work predicting the formation of helices, but wound up on the wrong track trying to make a triple-helix work for DNA.

      • Re:Rather, (Score:4, Informative)

        by Milo Fungus ( 232863 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @03:01PM (#5381182)

        And to nitpick even further, Watson and Crick didn't discover the structure. They formulated a model for the structure which was the first to accurately describe all of the scientific observations made up to that time. X-ray crystallography couldn't get high enough resolution to unambiguously prove the model for another few decades. At the time they proposed the model, there was not sufficient data to be absolutely certain about its accuracy. In other words, they did some masterful guesswork. The remarkable thing about W&C's original model was how accurate it was.

        Dr. Crick later postulated the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that DNA is replicated for inheritance, is transcribed to RNA, and that RNA is translated to protein. The central dogma is now well-established, but was certainly not when Crick proposed it. The role of RNA in protein synthesis was rather foggy at the time. Crick was a remarkable scientist who certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. The field of molecular biology has benefitted immeasureably from his contributions.

        The same goes for Linus Pauling. W&C beat him to the DNA structure, but he made some great contributions to the field nonetheless. Pauling's DNA structure was based upon the protonated form of DNA - where the phosphodiester backbone is electrically neutral. There is actually a -1 charge on phosphates in DNA, which is one of the reasons why the backbone wraps around the outside of the molecule. In his triple helix model the backbone was on the inside of the molecule, with the bases pointing out. This would made sense if the phophates were neutral, because they wouldn't repel each other. Having the bases on the outside also made sense because if the information was contained in the bases, then they ought to be accessible. He also had the wrong tautomeric forms of the bases, so the base pairing with hydrogen bonds wouldn't work properly. His was a good model. He was doing some good work. Just barking up the wrong tree.

        Pauling's greatest contributions were in protein structure. He proposed the alpha helix secondary structural element, which is found everywhere in proteins. If folding@home makes any progress whatsoever, they are building on the work of Linus Pauling.

        end nitpick;

  • Discovery of DNA prevented by co-ed universities? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by girl_geek_antinomy ( 626942 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:29AM (#5378401)
    I remember hearing a wonderful interview with Watson a few years ago - he was saying that if Cambridge had been more co-ed at the time (there were only three Womens' olleges, everywhere else was male) he'd have been too busy trying to get a girlfriend to spend all that time elucidating the structure of DNA.

  • 50th anniversary rememberance.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by cosmic_whiner ( 472167 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:31AM (#5378406)
    How come it's always only Watson and Crick - why dont people remember Maurice Wilkins (who shared the nobel prize with them) and Rosalind Franklin (who's pathbreaking Xray work led to the double helix)

    • Re:50th anniversary rememberance.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:47AM (#5378499) Homepage Journal
      ... why don't people remember ... Rosalind Franklin ...
      People remember "Watson and Crick" because those were the names on their paper. Wilkins declined to have his name included (d'oh!). And Franklin, she certainly does get remembered, but more for being "ripped off" [nytimes.com] (as many others have told me -- the full story is of course more complex) because she was just a post-doc, or a woman.
      • There were three back to back papers published in Nature (1953, No. 4356 pages 737-741): "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acids" by J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick, "Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids" by M.H.F Wilkins, A.R. Stokes and H.R. Wilson, and lastly "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate" by Rosalind Franklin. Also available on Nature's [nature.com] website for free, as someone else has already linked in. At least Watson and Crick did put Rosalind Franklin (and Maurice Wilkins) in their acknowledgements, but then that was probably the most they could get away with and even then in their article they poo-poo the fibre diffraction patterns obtained by Franklin (and others) despite the wealth of information that was obtained. In her article she independently states "The structure is probably helical. The phosphate groups lie on the outside of the structural unit, on a helix of diameter about 20 angstroms. The structural unit probably consists of two co-axial molecules which are not equally spaced along the fibere axis..." Her view on DNA structure is based on data she collected. Watson and Crick's structure is largely based on the same data (which they obtained without her permission, ie they stole it) and they come to similar conclusions.

    • Re:50th anniversary rememberance.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Uart ( 29577 ) <feedback@NosPam. ... rty-property.com> on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @10:39AM (#5378898) Homepage Journal
      because franklin was wrong. her x-ray diffraction worked, but she concluded that the nitrogenous bases were on the outside of the molecule..

      Watson and Crick built a worable model, including complementary base-pairing, and they went on to describe the semiconservative method of DNA synthesis (which of course was shown to be valid).

      Rosalind certainly derserves credit for her work with x-ray diffraction (and she gets it), but she didn't give the world a model of what DNA looks like
      • If someone makes 90% of a discovery why does someone who fills in the last 10% get all of the credit?
        • I would have to say you are right, except I think that the x-ray diffraction wasn't 90% of the discovery. Franklin's discovery was that 10% that made the last 90% possible.
          • If the Watson-Crick model was pure theory... i.e. if they never saw Franklin's work, her X-Ray diffraction results would have been hailed as confirming the theory, etc, etc... the irony is that in this scenario, Franklin would have gotten a lot more respect than she has gotten.

            However, she did her work before Watson-Crick and she was sold out by her advisor who gave her experimental data to Watson without telling her. So what if she didn't think up the model based on her data, Watson did... and he didn't even acknowledge it!

            Her experimental results lead to Watson and Crick's theory... and they didn't acknowledge it. That is a severe breach of scientific ethics. Just like Pete Rose isn't allowed in the Hall of Fame for his ethics breaches, Watson and Crick should have never gotten the Nobel prize.

      • It's certainly true that Franklin hadn't determined the structure correctly, but remember that she was virtually isolated in Oxford (thanks mostly to her personality conflicts with Maurice Wilkins.)

        Also, remember that Wilkins gave (without her knowledge or permission) Franklin's pictures to Watson. Without those pictures, it might have taken Watson longer to put the pieces together, and he wouldn't have had Franklin's high-quality (far better than Watson could do himself) pictures to verify the correctness of the structure. In that time period Franklin may have been able to deduce the structure herself, or perhaps Pauling would have gotten it right.

        The real tragedy is the way Watson treated Franklin, both in his scientific work and in his writings. Watson has become the poster boy for "the end justifies the means." I can't recall ever being more disappointed in a book than I was in The Double Helix.

        • The NY Times article about this mentions that Watson asked Wilkins if he and Franklin should share co-authorship on the famous article, but that Wilkins declined (for both of them!). From what I've read, I always thought Wilkins was the real dickhead; he just assumed that Franklin was a subordinate, and treated her as such. It would not be the last time that a junior scientist has had his or her research stolen by their faculty advisor (though Franklin was not even working under Wilkins). I've heard of worse.

          The real tragedy is the way Watson treated Franklin

          No, the real tragedy is that she died of ovarian cancer in 1958. For her to have done as well as she did in that era, she clearly must have been absolutely brilliant. And she did great work after DNA too- Aaron Klug won the Nobel for a project that Franklin was working on when she died. Birkbeck College (where she ended up) has a page about her which says she should have won two Nobels, if not for her untimely death.

      • Re:50th anniversary rememberance.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aluminum boy ( 589676 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @01:06PM (#5380165)
        "Wrong" grossly understates the complexity of Franklin's interaction with Watson/Crick. She was neither wrong nor right. She was doggedly neutral in assessing the structure of DNA. Franklin was wrapped up in the notion that the structure of DNA could only be discovered through X-Ray diffraction, and not through using the modelling approach that Watson and Crick ascribed to. Was was very, very, correct, however, when she discovered that DNA has two states: "zipped" and "unzipped". That served as a direct catalyst to Watson and Crick's break through. That would have gotten her the Nobel Prize, also, if she had survived long enough (it cannot be awarded posthumously).
        • If I had some mod points (and if I hadn't posted to this thread) I would toss you a +1 insightful.

          But yeah, you are right. The point I was trying to make was that Franklin DIDN'T determine thee structure of DNA. So although her work was important, she can't be given credit for what Watson and Crick did.

          I also agree that it was a shame that the times held her back. When someone can contribute, and they are willing to, then we should allow them too. All advances in science are for the benefit of humanity, regardless of the gender of those individuals behind them.

  • ages... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gamasta ( 557555 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:31AM (#5378410)
    Well, this's been a long long time. There was that whole revolution in cell physiology in the 70s. Now we're on the computational part.

    The human genome is read, but still we need to figure out: given a sequence of letters (out of the four), what protein (3-D structure, function, reactive parts etc) is associated with it? How is it cut into introns and exons? What sequence of letters can act as regulators? (without such answers I find the human genome project pretty useless)

    Still, a Nobel well awarded to Watson and Crick, I'd say.
    • given a sequence of letters (out of the four), what protein (3-D structure, function, reactive parts etc) is associated with it? How is it cut into introns and exons? What sequence of letters can act as regulators?

      Virtually all of this requires significant experimental work, to varying degrees- I wouldn't call this the "computational part" under any circumstances. Some things can be done at least partway through bioinformatics; introns and exons, for example. For protein structure and function the best we can do is use homology to proteins of known structure and/or function. To get the high-resolution structure, it still needs to be crystallized. . . which can be a colossal pain in the ass. Computational studies will not be a substitute for this until after all the protein structures have been solved experimentally anyway.

  • 50 years! (Score:4, Funny)

    by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:35AM (#5378432) Homepage
    Man, that just blows my mind, only 50 years of DNA. So what did they use before DNA? My grandma is older than 50... I wonder what she's made out of!

    Maybe thats where that "Sugar and spice and everything nice" thing came from?

  • More about Rosalind Franklin (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aces and Eights ( 634102 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:37AM (#5378442)
    According to this review [sciam.com] of her biography she was the woman who produced the x-ray data that most strongly supported the DNA structure but was not properly acknowledged for her contributions.

    That reveiw further goes on to say that... According to Watson's best-selling 1968 account of the great race, The Double Helix, Franklin was not even a contender, much less a major contributor. He painted her as a mere assistant to Wilkins who "had to go or be put in her place" because she had the audacity to think she might be able to work on DNA on her own. Worse yet, she "did not emphasize her feminine qualities," lamented Watson, who refers to her only as "Rosy." "The thought could not be avoided," he concluded, "that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab."

    Sounds like Watson was *quite* the ladies man =)

    • Not really correct (Score:2, Insightful)

      by reptilicus ( 605251 )
      The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do? Franklin reportedly felt no slight, and remained friendly and corresponded with Watson and Crick through her remaining years. And yes, had she been alive, she would have been given the Nobel along with them, but the awards are not given posthumously.

      • Re:Not really correct (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RafeDawg ( 138303 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @10:51AM (#5379000)

        The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do?

        Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data.

        • ---Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data--- Clearly you're not a scientist if you think things really work this way. Go to any meeting and you'll see people furiously taking notes, then running out to use their cel phones to call their labs... Regardless, Franklin's data was published in her own paper in the very same issue of Nature. (see http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html to view the originals). Do you think she would have been better served as a junior author on Watson and Crick's paper describing model building that she had no part of, or publishing as the first author on a paper showing her own work?
    • But we all knew that. If people are interested in reading a well written account of the years surrounding the elucidation of DNA's structure, I'd strongly recommend Horace Freeland Judson's book, The Eighth Day of Creation. Judson does a good job of discussing Franklin's contributions to the structure of DNA as well as dealing nicely with Watson's interesting personality. The book is probably one of the best books written about scientific discovery and the people involved.

      On Watson and his reputation as a "ladies man". Um. Let's just say that my mother was in college in the mid to late 1960's and she remembers him well. But not fondly.

      If any of you have the chance to see Watson speak, you will realize that the man is pretty nuts. I heard him speak at NIH a few years ago and spent most of the seminar with my jaw dropped. He insulted women, of course, big people, Asians (he referred to them as "little yellow people") and then went on to insult every prominent scientist in the audience. Now, while the third group of people deserve some insults occasionally, the rest of it was just stupid. I remember coming out of the auditorium thinking that Watson is a colossal jacka**. A year or two later he lectured at UC Berkeley and several faculty walked out on his lecture because it was so offensive.

      Anyway, he did some good science, but he isn't a Great Man in any way shape or form.

  • Now it's time to work out the folding... (Score:5, Informative)

    by MarvinMouse ( 323641 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:37AM (#5378444) Homepage Journal
    Personally, I think everyone should join folding@home

    http://folding.stanford.edu

    now this is a distributed project that's producing results.

    DNA is useful, and was an excellent discovery, but it's kinda like discovering the motherboard, and not understanding how any of the information is transmitted. Folding at home allows anyone with spare computer cycles to help out and understand how the proteins fold to their lowest/near lowest energy state and how they interact in the body.

    Already some medical advances have been made, but there's still a long way to go.
    • Or, alternately, UD Cancer Research [grid.org] -- pretty much the same as Folding@Home, but with an emphasis on cancer cures.

      Not that Folding@Home isn't after equally noble goals. Just giving options.

      One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

      Grid appears to be running a few other... interesting... projects as well. There's the Smallpox Project [grid.org], designed to find a Smallpox counteragent, and the PatriotGrid [grid.org], which is hopes to find counteragents/vaccines/whatever against a wide variety of bioterrorist agents.

      I think I'll stick with Cancer research.
      • The two projects are actually very different.

        Folding@Home does molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the pathway of protein folding. It does not predict the final structure, at least not to useful resolution. It is simply a biophysical simulation. Pretty cool at that, but people misunderstand it.

        The UD Cancer Research project is doing "virtual library screening" - essentially, docking many small molecules to proteins of known structure, sampling many conformations to determine which candidate compounds bind with the greatest affinity. The idea is that it will screen out the worst candidates, leaving many fewer to be verified experimentally.

        Many people are doing the latter; it's the basis of computational drug design. I think the other projects you mentioned are doing exactly the same sort of simulation. *If*, and only if, it works, it will actually be medically useful (though it still requires a lot of grunt work to verify the predictions).
      • One major downside of UD is that they don't have non-Windows clients, so if that's an issue go with Folding.

        One majr downside of Folding is that they only support Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (x86 only). Where's the IRIX, Solaris, BSD? How hard can it be to recompile, you would assume it was cleanly written from the fact that it already builds on two variants of Unix. Or why couldn't they have written their computation core to run within distributed.net's client and not only saved themselves some work, but benefitted from greater participation?

        Folding's cool, and I run it on my Dell, but given that I'm simply not interested in the clients that are available, I have MIPS (etc) hardware with plenty of spare cycles.
    • Folding at home allows anyone with spare computer cycles to help out and understand how the proteins fold to their lowest/near lowest energy state and how they interact in the body.

      Right. And running Linux allows anyone doing to to understand the finer points of C programming, multitsking OS design, memory management, file systems, video drivers and so forth and so on. [/sarcasm]

      It's only a program. Running it, in the background as designed, has as much impact on one's understanding of what it does, as the program has on the apparent performance of the computer running it. Specifically, no appreciable impact what so ever.
      • well.. sorry...

        more correctly.

        Folding at home allows anyone with spare computer cycles to help out and further mankind's understanding of how the proteins fold to their lowest/near lowest energy state and how they interact in the body.

        Is that better?
    • It's very nice to know how proteins fold. Good, solid, theoretical work. However, most people confuse this with what proteins look like when they're folded. Computational simulation will never be a substitute for experimental work in this field. Too many of the people talking about "protein folding" do not seem to understand this.

      To take your absurd motherboard example, understanding protein folding is more akin to understanding the principles of electromagnetism. It still won't tell you how the thing works.

      I haven't seen anyone doing interaction studies via biophysical simulation - it's all been done by other means. It's hard enough to simulate the folding of a small peptide chain; we're certainly not ready to study interactions of entire subunits.
      • To take your absurd motherboard example, understanding protein folding is more akin to understanding the principles of electromagnetism. It still won't tell you how the thing works.

        Yeah, I was pretty tired when I came up with taht metaphor. Sorry for the painfulness of it.

        I'll try to come up with a better one. It's pretty hard when it comes to proteins, dna and all.
    • Folding! hell I can barely match my socks! what next, you want me to Iron?
  • from http://www.strangemusic.com/genome_press.htm [strangemusic.com]

    In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA and the double helix, sTRANGEmUSIC presents the world premiere of GENOME: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Movements for Music & Video. Composed and directed by Patrick Grant, it is based on the book by award winning science author Matt Ridley. The work will be given two performances on February 27 and 28 (the latter date being the actual anniversary of the discovery) at 8:00 PM on each night at the ANNINA NOSEI GALLERY located at 530 West 22nd Street, New York City (10th & 11th Aves.) on the 2nd floor.

  • No Password (Score:4, Informative)

    by SkreamNet ( 610802 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:44AM (#5378484) Homepage
    Google Link [nytimes.com]

  • More on Rosalind Franklin (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know a med school student who very recently studied the discovery of DNA structure in great detail. When this student described the story to me it seemed less like Watson&Crick and Rosalind Franklin were equal contributors to the current perception of DNA structure, and more that they pretty much stole all of her work.
    Supposedly the only reason this misconception has never been officially corrected was because the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.
    • Watson and Crick got the answer. A lot of people didn't like the way they did very few experiments (they relied on the KCL results quite a bit) and spent the entire time *thinking* about what DNA must look like.

      The thing is, they knew what they were looking for. They stumbled across gold, but they were looking for gold. And they knew it when they found it.

      And they were lucky, too :-)

      Rosalind Franklin was well on the way to getting the structure, but Watson and Crick were valid contenders. And a lot of her work was in the public domain.

    • Re:More on Rosalind Franklin (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @11:41AM (#5379461) Journal
      Supposedly the only reason this misconception has never been officially corrected was because the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.

      On the contrary, if anything there's speculation that the Nobel committee waited for her to die so it was uncontroversial to award the prize to Watson, Crick and Wilkins. (There being a limit of three recipients.)

      Basically, however much Franklin was overlooked at the time, overcompensation and political correctness have led to her contributions being overestimated now. She had data, so did a lot of people. She might have worked out the structure on her own; Pauling certainly would have. Fundamentally, Watson and Crick made the breakthrough others didn't and they deserve credit for it.

  • Life Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by stroudie ( 173480 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:47AM (#5378496)
    A while back (~1987) the bbc [bbc.co.uk] produced a drama-documentary called "Life Story: a double helix", about the discovery of DNA (starring Tim Piggot-Smith & Jeff Goldblum).

    If you get the opportunity (it has been shown a number of times on US and UK TV), it is worth seeing as a very fair-minded and interesting history of the discovery. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is available on video, unless anyone knows different.

    • Re:Life Story (Score:2, Informative)

      by reptilicus ( 605251 )
      Available from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. It is not cheap, but comes with a license for public showing. http://www.cshlpress.com

  • and software makes the bioworld go round (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johnjones ( 14274 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:47AM (#5378501) Homepage Journal
    nice that DNA was discovered while stareing at Xrays now software does a good job

    info: sanger center Cambridge was one of the centers that they helped sequence human DNA

    why ? Because of the ability to patent squences of DNA
    (that drug companies get rich off) they had to do it before evil companies did like Celera Genomics who used a more inactuate method (shotgun) but evily patented it

    welcome trust is a huge Charity that funds research in this area

    ptenting DNA is silly these are naturally occuring things (squences) they where not created just discovered its all very silly

    Cuba and alot of africa are starting not to recognise these patents as they would like to build the drugs that help AIDS and HIV

    its sad that AIDS and HIV has to come along just to show the world that patents are stupid on DNA

    anyway

    here is lots of software related to DNA [sanger.ac.uk]

    regards

    John Jones
    • Hmm...

      So a drug company come along and patent a sequence of DNA. "We own this, " they say. "It's ours."

      Does this not imply that they accept responsibility for any disease causing properties of the sequence?

      It would be sweet if those same companies that patented interesting sequences of cancer causing genes, so that they could exclude the competition, were then liable to anyone sick because they possesed that particular mutation.

      Just dreaming...

    • Because of the ability to patent squences of DNA

      No. You can't patent sequences of DNA. You can only patent potential uses of that DNA. So, the use of BRCA2 in a diagnostic test for predisposition to breast cancer is patented in much the same way that a test for the protein it produces being used for a diagnostic test for predisposition to breast cancer could be patented (and probably is).

      Biotechnology companies do, however, take the piss here. Upon finding a gene and gaining some idea about its function, they have a tendancy to file several hundred patents covering every possible uesful application of that gene.
    • Because of the ability to patent squences of DNA
      (that drug companies get rich off) ...

      Please, to make your point stronger, name ONE company that got rich with patents on DNA.

      No, not even one?
    • ptenting DNA is silly these are naturally occuring things (squences) they where not created just discovered its all very silly

      You're right, but then again your observation is pointless because no-one is patenting DNA sequences. They are however patenting drugs and therapies that are discovered as a result of studying the sequence. That's no different from patenting any other drug.

      Now, you may not think that companies are justified in getting a return from their investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in research, but that's irrelevant here, because you have demonstrated that you simply do not understand the issue. Also note that without that investment of private money, the medicines would simply not exist.

      Cuba and alot of africa are starting not to recognise these patents as they would like to build the drugs that help AIDS and HIV

      Really? Please post an example of a modern medicine developed by Cuba or an African nation. Please also post, in USD or the currency of your choice, the amounts invested by Cuba and African nations in biotech research, and the numbers of researchers working in each of those countries. For further credit, you may compare and contrast those numbers with the West.

  • Celibrate with a drink (Score:3, Funny)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @09:48AM (#5378507) Homepage
    I'll be asking my local bartender to "Make mine a double Felix".

  • Other points of interest (Score:3, Informative)

    by reptilicus ( 605251 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @10:00AM (#5378569)
    Nature has a whole section on the 50th Anniversary: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/index.html Also, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (which is run by Watson) is holding a meeting starting Wednesday night to celebrate the anniversary. The whole thing is supposed to be streamed live over the web for free. Not sure of the exact link for this, but the general site is: http://www.cshl.org/ And their 50th Anniversary site is: http://www.dna50.org/main.htm
    • Yes, the Nature coverage is excellent - and free, unlike the usual content.

      (I was struck how one of the DNA repair mechanism was like that bizarre DLL restoration mechanism in WinXP... not so daft after all?)

      Are they issuing a supplement or book? I couldn't make this from the site.

  • I find it interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keyslammer ( 240231 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @10:01AM (#5378577) Homepage Journal
    ... that /. now has on the same page a report of the 50 year anniversary of the discovery of DNA and another report of [slashdot.org]
    the construction of a super-computer from DNA.

    50 years from discovery to super-computer technology. Can you say "accelerating returns"? Can ya? Sure you can!

  • I like this part (from NYT- my school, Rice University, gives us the NYT at breakfast every morning!)...

    Dr. Crick published an article on the nature of consciousness just this month.

    Dude, what a beast this guy is! Still going! Has anybody found this article new article of his? It would be neat to read...

  • Progress (Score:2, Funny)

    by Cappy Red ( 576737 )
    Fifty years after the structure is discovered, we're making plans to play Doom 3 on it.
  • You can buy a limited edition print of Crick and Watson with the original DNA model here [sciencepho...lery.co.uk].

  • The Pursuit of Happiness (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scotay ( 195240 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @11:08AM (#5379137)
    When I was living close to Independence Hall in Philly, I had the pleasure of seeing Watson and Crick receive the Liberty Medal on July 4th. Watson actually showed and Crick had a speech on tape.

    The only thing worse than the oppressive heat, was the abortion protestors who surrounded the perimeter of award ceremony with their stupid yelling. I had never seen protests like this at another liberty award. The abortion protestors and their wall-sized dead fetus posters were nowhere to be found when Colin Powell got his medal. As if the discovery of the structure of DNA was somehow responsible for abortion.

    Watson made a great speech [cshl.org] that touched on their discovery, politics in a time of war, God and science, happiness and endorphins. Reads even better in 2003 than it did in 2000.

  • Or as the Brits say (Score:3, Funny)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @11:10AM (#5379148) Homepage Journal
    Crick and Watson (can't let the Americans get first bill on everything).

  • The original model (Score:4, Informative)

    by RDW ( 41497 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2003 @11:51AM (#5379534)
    If you're in London you can see the original structural model of DNA (retort clamps and all), models of several other significant molecules, some early computers, and the Apollo 10 command module (!) all in one gallery at the Science Museum:

    http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ [sciencemuseum.org.uk]

    DNA structure [nmsi.ac.uk]


    • Actually I was there last week and distinctly remember that the label on the model of DNA states that it is a replica. The apollo 10 command module is the real thing though.

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