The golden helix

[C Elegans]

Today, 25th of April, is is exacty 50 years ago Watson and Crick published the paper with the famous opening paragraph:

"This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest"

I am of course talking about the double helix, the structure of DNA. All three papers by Watson & Crick, Wilkins and Franklin, that described and provided evidence for the double helix being the structure of DNA, were published in Nature the 25th of April 1953.

Nature has a nice site for those of you interested in learning some basic genetics, and the links at the bottom of the page provide an excellent introduction to the history of genetics from Mendel to the modern knock out/knock in techniques to breed transgenic animals.

We've come a long way during these 50 years. The cloning of Dolly was published in 1996. The Human genome projects (HGP) has sequenced the humane genome. We can make transgenic animals that lack certain genes (knock out), or have specific genes added to their genome (knock in), from conception or later during development. That way, the function of a gene can be studied, and candidate genes believed to be of importance for various diseases can be tested. Much hope lies in new genotherapeutic methods: a retrovirus can be programmed to exchange a defect gene in a host cell, and replace it with a functioning gene. Tailor made drugs for different genotypes are already in the making.

But DNA and genes are only the beginning of the much larger and deeper project to understand life. DNA transmit genetic information from generation to generatin over time, but what a gene really does is encoding for the proteins that consitute life. And what do these proteins really do? Enter proteonomics and
HUPO, the next so called Big Science effort.

I don't usually celebrate my birthday, but today I have celebrated the Double helix's birthday in the most fitting way, starting off with an important meeting regarding my twin project that aims to bring clarification to the chain genes - mediated by neurobiology and neurochemistry - function in behaviour, and was rounded off by dinner and planning of future projects with a good friend of mine who is a prominent molecular geneticist who now has his own lab at the same university where my lab is.

Happy anniversary! And if somebody has questions about genetics I will try to reply in this thread - I am not a geneticist but I'm learning...

[Gruntboy]

Why am I genetically insane?

[VoodooDali]

Uh...I was going to ask the same question.

[Gruntboy]

WHat, why you are genetically nuts, or why grunt is nuts?

[VoodooDali]

Originally posted by Gruntboy
WHat, why you are genetically nuts, or why grunt is nuts?

Yes.

[fable]

@CE, did you want me to add "No spam" to your topic, or does your scientific curiosity extend into monitoring the decay rate of a serious idea on SYM?

[C Elegans]

Thanks Fable, but it's not necessary...this is mostly a celebration thread - I figured there wouldn't be enough serious questions to keep this thread on page 1 for 30 minutes if I had added "no spam" to it

[fable]

Suits me. Nice avatar, by the way. Resembles an old girl friend of mine.

[Waverly]

CE, I'm surprised you mention Crick and Watson, but not their piracy of Rosalind Franklin's work. Isn't it still accepted that the discovery would not have been possible without her work; which was used without credit or permission?

[Gwalchmai]

"The study of genetics on the Disc had failed at an early stage, when wizards tried the experimental crossing of such well known subjects as fruit flies and sweet peas. Unfortunately they didn't quite grasp the fundamentals, and the resultant offspring - a sort of green bean thing that buzzed - led a short sad life before being eaten by a passing spider."
Terry Pratchertt, Sourcery, 1988.

[VoodooDali]

@Gwally - cool quote!

A meme is an idea that is passed on from one human generation to another. It's the cultural equivalent of a gene, the basic element of biological inheritance.

"The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subjects during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle ... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may once have been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the lungs. The word may once have been a healthy neural cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting your sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word."
----William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded

"Language is a virus from outer space." -- William S. Burroughs

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Here's some food for thought; what if we extend the idea of memes to include morality? Maybe our whole system of values is a set of standards of belief and behavior, memes that have turned out to be the most useful for helping humankind live and interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.

I did my first ever university essay on this.

[C Elegans]

Originally posted by fable
Nice avatar, by the way. Resembles an old girl friend of mine.

May I ask in what way it resembles that ex girlfriend of yours? She was curvy and twisted?

Originally posted by Waverly
CE, I'm surprised you mention Crick and Watson, but not their piracy of Rosalind Franklin's work. Isn't it still accepted that the discovery would not have been possible without her work; which was used without credit or permission?

But I did! In the beginning of my post I mention 4 names: Crick, Watson, Wilkins and Franklin. They all published their classical papers in that same issue of Nature the 25th of April 1953. Watson and Crick described the structure of DNA in
A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, Wilkins, Stokes and Wilson analyse the X-ray crystallographic evidence in Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids and Franklin and Gosling published Franklin's famous X-ray photo and provide further evidence in Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate .

Crick, Watson and Wilkins was awarded the Nobel prize in 1962. Franklin had then been dead from ovarian cancer for 4 years. She should of course have shared the prize if she had been alive - but would she have shared it? We will never know, since the Nobel prize cannot be awarded posthumously. In any case, there is no question about the fact that Crick and Watson could not have figured out the DNA was a double helix as early as they did, if Wilkins had not shown them Franklin's X-ray photos without Franklin's knowledge. Franklin's lab notes show that she was close to make the discovery herself, but she worked with the problem from another angle than Crick and Watson and she thought there were still some inconsistancies in the model. Crick and Watson certainly did not pirat her work: they combined their own work with what they saw at Franklin's photo. Franklin most likely did not know they had seen her photos, and Wilkins most likely didn't know what it meant to Crick and Watson that he showed the photos to them.

In any case, there is no evidence that Franklin ever was the "wronged heroine" that she has sometimes been pictured as later. This is a good analysis of the situation. Crick and Watson may have been chauvinists, but they did not steal her work.

[fable]

Originally posted by C Elegans
May I ask in what way it resembles that ex girlfriend of yours? She was curvy and twisted?

Got it in one! She was a lying control freak. I was too young and hormonal at the time to note the signals. (Someone's probably going to point out that in my day it was smoke signals. These younguns, I tells ya...)

[Gruntboy]

Thanks CE, don't think I could handle another admonishment from fable. Now where's his fox thread gone?