The Discovery of DNA

In 1953, two young scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick made one of the most important
discoveries of the twentieth century.

They worked out the structure of DNA - large molecule found in every cell of our body that
contains all the information required for life.

Watson and Crick used experimental results obtained buy Rosalind Franklin to help build their model showing the shape of DNA.

Crick and Watson wrote-up their findings and had them published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953 in an article titled “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”.

Following the discovery of the first practical microspore in late 17th century by A. van
Leeuwenhoek (1623-1723), research was dominated for several decades by cytologists doing
observations of all kind of material under the microsphere.

In 1665, Robert Hooke named cells the smallest living biological structure surrounded by walls observed in cork.

It was in 1869, a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher isolated a substance that he called ‘nuclein’, now known as DNA.

Only a few years earlier Gregor Mendel had finished series of experiments with peas and made observations that turned out to be so closely connected the the finding of nuclein. This was the starting of the science of genetics.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was the one who study the DNA and get credit for the discovery of double helix.

And it was Rosalind Franklin (1921-1958), whose X-ray images of DNA crystals gave clues about the double helical structure.

Franklin used –x-ray diffraction techniques, to experimentally examine the structure of DNA.

The earliest studies reveled genes to be discrete factors that were retained throughout the life of an organism and then passed on tor each of its progeny.

Over the following century, these hereditary factors were shown to reside on chromosomes and to consist of DNA, a macromolecule with extraordinary properties.

The discovery of the form of the DNA molecule and its code is considered by many to be one of the most important discoveries of modern science.

It wasn’t until the mid seventies, with new technologies of replicating and ‘cutting and pasting’ DNA that the genetic information explosion took off.
The Discovery of DNA