Word: dna
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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WHATEVER else may be said about James D. Watson in The Double Helix, he is honest about his motives. He knew then (in 1953, when he was 24 years old) that DNA was something big. He knew that to the scientist who discovered its structure would come renown and a Nobel Prize. And he knew that Linus Pauling, working in California, was after the prize and had a head start on Watson and his colleagues working in England. "Within a few days of my arrival," he writes, "we knew what to do: imitate Linus Pauling and beat...
...furthermore creates the distinct impression that he and Francis Crick are scientifically inferior to Pauling--that they are fighting an uphill battle against an acknowledged champion. At one point, they realize that some problems in ionic bonding are crucial roadblocks to their attempt to solve the structure of DNA...
...difficult to believe some of Watson's tales about the quarrelsome coterie of scientists in Great Britain who were after DNA. One woman, Rosalind Franklin, refuses to let Watson and Crick see her X-ray photographs of DNA crystals, the world's best, because she does not believe in the helix theory, and insists on working independently. At one point, Rosy--as her colleagues call her--almost assaults Watson in a one-one-one situation...
...identical" quads, or triplets or twins-in armadillos or any other animal, including man-have long been explained away as the result of differences in environment. But there is a growing suspicion that there are other influences. And that suspicion was strengthened by the recent discovery that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule that contains the coded message of heredity, exists outside of the genes...
...studied both the genetic code and its function in building proteins by analyzing "transfer RNA," a form of ribonucleic acid. RNA collects amino acids floating in the cell and, like a tug towing a barge, pulls them to an assembly site where, in the sequence dictated by the master DNA molecule, they are combined into the appropriate protein. Holley worked out the complete structure of a transfer RNA molecule, demonstrating how it attaches to a particular amino acid and brings it to the growing protein chain at the proper time and place...