Word: helix
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...unraveling of the DNA double helix was one of the great events in science, comparable to the splitting of the atom or the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. It also marked the maturation of a bold new science: molecular biology. Under this probing discipline, man could at last explore-and understand-living things at their most fundamental level: that of their atoms and molecules...
...Cambridge University had beaten out some of the giants of biochemistry, including Caltech's future Nobel prizewinner, Linus Pauling. More important, in discovering DNA's now famous double-helical, or spiral-staircase, architecture, they also suggested how the magic molecule works: the two sides of the helix unzip, so that each can act as a template for making an exact copy of the original genetic material. Thus Watson and Crick not only described the three-dimensional geometry of DNA, which forms the genes in all living things, but also showed how it passes its message from one generation...
...looked appropriately oracular: Watson with his aureole of thinning hair, Crick with a rim of silver. Still, there were flashes of the brash biochemists who had once electrified the scientific world. Watson displayed the pointed wit that he employed so deftly in his gossipy, irreverent 1968 history, The Double Helix (it began with the line "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood...
...glorious and divine purpose to fly mountains, to sow petalscent. . . to glorify glory, to love with love." His bride answered: "We hereby commit ourselves to a serenity more flamboyant and more foolish than a petalfall of Magnolia." And the bridegroom came back thus: "This is the purest double helix of our us-ness...
...force between the superpowers. Its collapse, combined with the erosion of the tacit, increasingly fragile regulation of offensive weapons that now exists, would very likely mark the end of arms control and the beginning of a new round in the arms race. This might be characterized by a double helix of two intertwined vicious spirals, one in offensive and the other in defensive weapons. What a double jeopardy that would be. And what a dramatic chart for Reagan to study a year or so from...