Genetics and Health

Papers Documenting Early Understanding of DNA

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on August 14th, 2005

J. Craig Venter, wildcard in the genomic revolution, is now owner of a collection of scientific papers documenting the 13 years following the discovery of DNA structure. In 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson, with the help of Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray photos of DNA, arrived at the structure of DNA which was pivotal in our understand of DNA function.

The collection has many of the papers of Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray photos of DNA provided the data from which Dr. Crick and Dr. Watson divined the structure. These include a print of the famous photo No. 51, described in Dr. Watson’s book “Double Helix.” Details from this photo, Dr. Watson recounted, gave Dr. Crick vital clues about the structure of DNA.

It also contains an early and rather different draft of Dr. Watson’s book, then called “Honest Jim,” that Harvard University Press found too scandalous to publish, after it received a deluge of criticism from Dr. Crick and other leading scientists.

Worth at least 3 million dollars, the collection will reside at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD. Next time I visit friends in the area, I will definitely be by to pay homage.

The New York Times, August 10, 2005

Pointer from snowdeal.org.

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