Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

Maclyn McCarty with Francis Crick and James D. Watson

Watson and Crick used many aluminum templates like this one ( adenine (A)) to construct a physical model of DNA in 1953.

Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (German: "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribonucleic acid") is a by James D. Watson and Francis Crick on April 25, 1953 in Volume 171 of the science journal Nature on the Pages 737 to 738 published article.

background

The article was the first to describe the discovery of the double helix as the structure of DNA . The discovery had a great influence on the further development of biology , especially genetics .

This article is often called a “pearl of science” for its brief explanation of one of the fundamental mysteries of living organisms. This riddle was the question of how it is possible to store genetic information in an organism and pass it on from generation to generation. The article showed a simple and elegant solution that surprised many biologists at a time when it was believed that transcription was much more complex and difficult to understand.

literature

Horace Freeland Judson: The Eighth Day of Creation. Makers of the Revolution in Biology . Simon and Schuster, 1979, ISBN 0-671-22540-5 .
Brenda Maddox : Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA 2002, ISBN 978-0-06-098508-0 .
Robert Olby : The Path to The Double Helix: Discovery of DNA . MacMillan, 1974, ISBN 0-486-68117-3 . With foreword by Francis Crick; revised in 1994, with a 9 page postscript.
James D. Watson: The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA . Atheneum, 1980, ISBN 0-689-70602-2 . First published in 1968.
Maurice Wilkins: The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins 2003, ISBN 0-19-860665-6 .

Web links

Online versions of the article

Copy from the National Library of Medicine (PDF; 195 kB) in the Francis Crick Documents Collection
James D. Watson, Francis H. Crick: Molecular Structure Of Nucleic Acids . In: American Journal of Psychiatry . tape 160 , no. 4 , 2003, p. 623–624 , doi : 10.1176 / appi.ajp.160.4.623 (commemorative version - free full text).

Individual evidence

↑ JD Watson, FHC Crick: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid . In: Nature . tape 171 , no. 4356 , April 1953, ISSN 1476-4687 , p. 737-738 , doi : 10.1038 / 171737a0 ( nature.com [accessed July 29, 2020]).

[1] JD Watson, FHC Crick: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid . In: Nature . tape 171 , no. 4356 , April 1953, ISSN 1476-4687 , p. 737-738 , doi : 10.1038 / 171737a0 ( nature.com [accessed July 29, 2020]).