Word: molecular
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...despite these dismal odds, they made a discovery that in the half-century since has transformed science, medicine and much of modern life--though the full impact has yet to be felt. The tale of how this unlikely pair solved the most basic mystery of molecular biology is a reminder that brilliant minds and top-notch training aren't necessarily enough to penetrate the secrets of nature. You also need resilience, dogged persistence, plus a fair amount of luck--and as Watson inadvertently proved with the 1968 best seller The Double Helix, his controversial inside account of the discovery...
...life's essential features is the storage and transmission of information--that is, a genetic code that passes from parent to child. And because it had to be both complex and compact enough to fit inside a single cell, this code had to be written at the molecular level...
...winning the race to figure out the structure of keratin, the protein that makes up hair and fingernails. (It was a long, complex corkscrew of atoms known as the alpha-helix.) While he did rely on X-ray crystallographs for hints to what was going on at the molecular level, Pauling depended more heavily on scaled-up models he built by hand, using his deep knowledge of the ways atoms can bond together. Cavendish scientists, relying mostly on X rays, hadn't bothered to consult their colleagues in the chemistry department about what was or wasn't possible for atoms...
...since told scientists what DNA was made of: four types of organic molecules, known as bases--adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine, or A, C, T and G--almost certainly strung somehow along a "backbone" of sugar and phosphate. The question was, How? "Perhaps a week of solid fiddling with the molecular models would be necessary," writes Watson, "to make us absolutely sure we had the right answer. Then it would be obvious to the world that Pauling was not the only one capable of true insight into how biological molecules were constructed...
APRIL Linus Pauling deciphers the molecular structure of the protein keratin...