DNA and the Double Helix in the Fifties: Papers Published in Nature which mention DNA and the Double Helix

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3 DNA and the Double Helix in the Fifties: Papers Published in Nature which mention DNA and the Double Helix DNA paper Mention double helix

4 Warren Weaver, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Dream of a New Science of Man The challenge of this situation is obvious. Can man gain intelligent control of his own power? Can we develop so sound and extensive a genetics that we can hope to breed, in the future, superior men? Can we obtain knowledge of the physiology and psychobiology of sex so that man can bring this pervasive, highly important, and dangerous aspect of life under rational control? Can we unravel the tangled problem of the endocrine glands, and develop, before it is too late, a therapy for the whole hideous range of mental and physical disorders which result from glandular disturbances? Can we solve the mysteries of the various vitamins so that we can nurture a race sufficiently healthy and resistant? Can we release psychology from its present confusion and ineffectiveness and shape it into a too which every man can use every day? Can man acquire enough knowledge of his own vital processes so that we can hope to rationalize human behavior? Can we, in short, create a new science of man? Warren Weaver, the head of the natural sciences division of the Rockefeller Foundation, in an internal foundation report (February 14, 1936)

5 Rockefeller Foundation annual report (1938), p. 203 In these early years of molecular biology, none of us knew what we were doing. Then Watson and Crick found the double helix, and within a few weeks we realized we were doing molecular biology. Gunther Stent Molecular Biology

6 The Watson-Crick hypothesis of deoxyribonucleic acid structure has made it increasingly profitable for biologists and chemists to think, talk, and write about genetic units in terms of clearly defined chemical concepts. George Beadle, The Role of the Nucleus in Heredity (1957)

Sydney Brenner The Double Helix Sets the Agenda for Molecular Biology in the 1950s The Watson-Crick structure provided the basis for coherently explaining gene specificity, gene regulation and gene

7 Sydney Brenner The Double Helix Sets the Agenda for Molecular Biology in the 1950s The Watson-Crick structure provided the basis for coherently explaining gene specificity, gene regulation and gene mutation. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that most work in molecular biology during the past five years has been totally based on the hypotheses put forward by Watson and Crick. Sydney Brenner, Mechanisms of Gene Action (1958)

8 George Gamow

9 Letter from Gamow to Watson and Crick Scientific American (October 1955)

Comparing a living cell with a factory, we can consider its nucleus as the manager s office and the chromosomes as the filing cabinets where all the production plans and

10 Comparing a living cell with a factory, we can consider its nucleus as the manager s office and the chromosomes as the filing cabinets where all the production plans and blueprints are stored. The main body of the cell, its cytoplasm, corresponds to the factory area where workers are manufacturing the specified product from incoming raw materials.

11 The Two Problems of Cell Communication 1. How is information stored in the chromosomes? 2. How is it transmitted from the chromosomes in the nucleus to the enzymes in the cytoplasm?

12 The living cell contains another agent, very similar to DNA, which seems to play an important role in the synthesis of proteins. It is ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA appears to be a close chemical relative of DNA, though one of its nucleotides is different and it seems to be made of a single chain instead of a double one. There are indications in recent biological studies that RNA may be an intermediary which carries messages from the DNA of the chromosomes to the enzymes in the cytoplasm like factory foremen taking instructions from the manager s office and passing them on to the workers in the factory in simplified language.

13 Caltech s annoyingly girlless campus

14 The Athenaeum, the Caltech faculty club where Watson lived and endured the heaviness of the university s social life

15 Jim Watson appears in Vogue in August 1954 a scientist, with the bemused look of a British poet

16 The RNA Tie Club: Do or Die, or Don t Try

17 The official tie of the RNA Tie Club, designed by George Gamow (cost: $4)

19 François Jacob, Jacques Monod and André Lwoff

The living cell contains another agent, very similar to DNA, which seems to play an important role in the synthesis of proteins. It is ribonucleic acid (RNA).

20 The living cell contains another agent, very similar to DNA, which seems to play an important role in the synthesis of proteins. It is ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA appears to be a close chemical relative of DNA, though one of its nucleotides is different and it seems to be made of a single chain instead of a double one. There are indications in recent biological studies that RNA may be an intermediary which carries messages from the DNA of the chromosomes to the enzymes in the cytoplasm like factory foremen taking instructions from the manager s office and passing them on to the workers in the factory in simplified language.

21 The Coding Problem: How is the DNA language of the chromosomes translated into the protein language of the enzymes? What mathematical tricks make it possible to transform a message represented by a sequence using for symbols into one using 20 symbols?

22 Gamow s cartoon of the card game of life

23 ALA ARG One Base 4 Combinations ASP CYS ASN GLU GLN GLY Two Bases 16 Combinations (4 x 4) 20 Amino Acids HIS LEU MET ISO LYS PHE PRO SER Three Bases 64 Combinations (4 x 4 x 4) THR TYR TRY VAL

24 The Problem: How can the four-letter code of nucleic acid be converted into a 20-letter protein code? Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat in 1961

26 The Coding Problem: How is the DNA language of the chromosomes translated into the protein language of the enzymes? What mathematical tricks make it possible to transform a message represented by a sequence using for symbols into one using 20 symbols?

27 Francis Crick: We eventually realized that solving the code could viewed as an abstract problem, divorced from the actual biochemical details.

28 From Bases to Suits; or, Translating Biochemistry into Mathematics George Gamow, Information Transfer in the Living Cell, Scientific American (October 1955)

29 From Bases to Suits; or, Translating Biochemistry into Mathematics From: George Gamow and Martynas Yčas, The Cryptographic Approach to the Problem of Protein Synthesis (1958)

30 A Mathematical Breakthrough? Gamow discovered that there are exactly twenty combinations of triplets if you disregard order

31 The whole business of the code was a complete mess. We were completely lost, you see. Didn t know where to turn. Nothing fitted. Francis Crick on the state of the Coding Problem, circa 1960

32 Sydney Brenner: There was a culture well a cult, almost that became typical of molecular biology. What became prized was ingenuity. You know? I mean it doesn t need all the bloody tubes and counters and so on. And I think that the cult got founded around these ideas of how to solve the code without ever open the black box.

34 The Elite of Molecular Biology Meet: The Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Cellular Regulatory Mechanisms (1961)

35 The Coding Problem: Challenging Days Ahead? One approach [to the coding problem] involves ignoring the transcription machinery completely, considering it as a black box with the information from DNA going in at one end and the polypeptide chain coming out of the other. Attempts to deduce the code from cryptic messages of amino acid sequences have ended in failure, and have only convinced us that the problem is not of quick and easy solution. Sydney Brenner, RNA, Ribosomes, and Protein Synthesis, Cold Spring Harbor Symposium (1961)

Basic concepts of molecular biology

Basic concepts of molecular biology Gabriella Trucco Email: gabriella.trucco@unimi.it What is life made of? 1665: Robert Hooke discovered that organisms are composed of individual compartments called cells