The key take-home lesson is that the importance of DNA was recognized by a small group of scientists who were paying attention to the scientific literature. By the time of Watson and Crick (1953) this small group was already convinced that DNA was the "stuff of life," which is why they realized that solving the structure was extremely important.
This is not unusual. There are many cases where a small group of knowledgeable experts are well in advance of the average scientist who often doesn't even realize that a revolution is under way.
- Episode 1 on Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of nuclein
- Episode 2 on Albrecht Kossel and the discovery of the building blocks of nuclein
- Episode 3 on Walter Sutton and the relation between chromosomes and heredity
- Episode 4 on Fred Griffith and the discovery of bacterial transformation/li>
- Episode 5 on Phoebus Levene, DNA chemistry and the tetranucleotide hypothesis
- Episode 6 on William Astbury, Florence Bell and the first X-ray pictures of DNA
- Episode 7 on Oswald Avery, Colin McLeod, and Maclyn McCarty and the chemical basis of bacterial transformation
- Episode 8 on Maclyn McCarty, Oswald Avery and the enzymatic evidence for DNA as the transforming substance
- Episode 9 on Erwin Chargaff and the evidence for non-uniformity of nucleotide base composition in DNA
- Episode 10 on Harriet Ephrussi-Taylor, Rollin Hotchkiss and the demonstration of bacterial transformation as a general phenomenon
- Episode 11 on Alfred Hershey, Martha Chase, and the conclusive evidence for the function of DNA as the material of heredity
- Episode 12 on Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, their collaborators, and the data that supported the double helix model for DNA structure
- Episode 13 on James Watson, Francis Crick, and the DNA Double Helix
- Episode 14 on Matthew Meselson, Franklin Stahl, and semiconservative replication of DNA
- Episode 15 A conversation with Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl
Lawrance, thanks so much for posting this series! It was a pleasure to hear the voice of Matt Meselson, whom I got to know while I was junior faculty at Harvard. A remarkable scientist and a wonderful person!
ReplyDelete@Ken
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the 'page group so I got to talk to him quite a bit, mostly at Cold Spring Harbor. He's a great person, very smart.
We shared an interest in some games that we both liked.
-Larry
Good afternoon prof. Moran.
ReplyDeleteI'm writing for a totally off topic reason. I'm a science communicator from Brazil and I've recently read your amazing book about junk DNA.
I know you have "clashed" with creationists in the past. Here in Brazil, unfortunately, we are witnessing a growth of the ID movement, Young Earth Creationism and evolution denialism on the internet.
Considering your background and your expertise in biochemistry, would you like to be our guest in an interview about the most common creationist talking points and fallacies concerning biochemistry and genetics?
For example, "irreducible complexity", the Hoyle fallacy, the "waiting time problem", junk DNA, etc.?
We would also be interested in your opinions about the metabolism first hypothesis on the origin of life, given that is has been such a growing field in the last years, with many new papers being published in the last 4-6 years showing experimental evidence for metal and mineral catalysis for multiple steps leading to the synthesis of universal metabolites
@Francesco Please email me with more information. Thanks.
ReplyDeletefirst_initial_of_my_name dot last_name at utoronto dot ca