Word: dna
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...James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, Crick was heard to remark that they had "found the secret of life." With all due respect for DNA, I would like to nominate another candidate for secret of life: non-zero-sumness. An ugly word, I know, but remember: deoxyribonucleic acid didn't get where it is today on the basis of its looks...
...Genome Project, like the proverbial tortoise, took the slow and steady route. Scientists first divided the full complement of human DNA into 22,000 segments, each 150,000 letters long. The positions of these segments were carefully mapped, and then each was cloned several times. Those cloned segments are now being decoded by automated gene sequencers, and the process repeated several times to ensure accuracy and close any gaps in the coverage. Because each segment was mapped before cloning, the decoded segments can be easily fitted back into their original position in the completed genetic...
...lovers leaving lovers say, By the time you read this, I'll be gone. Or possibly I won't. Given the way life is being prolonged these days, I--with my pig's liver, titanium hips and knees, artificial heart, transplanted kidney and reconstructed DNA--could write this letter in my century and pick it up in yours. ("Dear Me"--the perfect address for a solipsistic time.) No thanks. It is enough to be able to send these words across the abyss of years to tell something of who we are. We are members of a narrative species...
...DNA is likely to be the discovery made in the 20th century that will be the most important to the 21st. The world is just a few years away from deciphering the entire sequence of more than 100,000 human genes encoded by the 3 billion chemical pairs of our DNA. That will open the way to new drugs, genetic engineering and designer babies...
Watson had sketched out how four chemical bases paired to create a self-copying code at the core of the double-helix-shaped DNA molecule. In the more formal announcement of their discovery, a one-page paper in the journal Nature, they noted the significance in a famously understated sentence: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." But they were less restrained when persuading Watson's sister to type up the paper for them. "We told her," Watson wrote in The Double Helix, "that...