Word: helix
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...quote that nailed the story, however, and put it on the front page, was the one attributed to James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA's double helix and one of the most famous scientists in the world. "Judah," he is supposed to have said, "is going to cure cancer in two years...
...Crick and Watson who first introduced us to DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. Crick, a Brit, was an inveterate scientific tinkerer as a boy. Watson, a Chicago native, won his degrees in zoology. In 1953 both were researchers at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, where they identified the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecular substance that makes possible the transmission of inherited characteristics. In 1976 Crick joined the Salk Institute and geared his energies toward exploring the workings of the brain, including short- and long-term memory and the phenomenon of dreams. Watson's interest in genes has not diminished...
...same way that the modern era of genetics research began in 1953 when the DNA double helix was identified, the modern era of aging research is thought to have begun in 1961, when anatomist Leonard Hayflick made an equally significant discovery. Hayflick had been troubled by the question of where aging begins. Is it the cells themselves that falter, dragging the whole human organism down with them? Or could cells live on indefinitely were it not for some age-related deterioration in the higher tissues they make...
Schellenberg's work is noteworthy not only because he found the gene behind such misery, but because he knows how it works. The genetic sequence he discovered codes for the enzyme helicase, which is responsible for unzipping the DNA double helix before it replicates. If this unzipping is disrupted, helicase can't tweeze out mutations that randomly occur and instead allows them to pass through to the next cellular generation. Accumulate enough glitches, and diseases of aging develop. "We know that DNA is being damaged at a high rate," he says. "Knowing that a helicase is responsible gets us closer...
...entire process of achievement took a major turn toward today's exuberant state in the 1950s. The demonstration of the double-helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 was the long-awaited key that opened the door to a rich trove of fundamental biological knowledge. In time this discovery did nothing less than bring to light the secrets hidden within the membrane of each of the 200 different varieties into which the human body's 75 trillion cells are divided...