Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid
The article presents a simple and elegant solution, which surprised many biologists at the time who believed that DNA transmission was going to be more difficult to deduce and understand.
What makes the structure of DNA so obviously related to its function was described modestly at the end of the article: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material".
When Watson and Crick produced their double helix model of DNA, it was known that most of the specialized features of the many different life forms on Earth are made possible by proteins.
Although Watson and Crick were first to put together all the scattered fragments of information that were required to produce a successful molecular model of DNA, their findings had been based on data collected by researchers in several other laboratories.
For example, they drew on published research relating to the discovery of Hydrogen bonds in DNA by John Masson Gulland, Denis Jordan and their colleagues at University College Nottingham in 1947.
In 1968, Watson published a highly controversial autobiographical account of the discovery of the double-helical, molecular structure of DNA called The Double Helix, which was not publicly accepted either by Crick or Wilkins.
In particular, in late 1952, Franklin had submitted a progress report to the Medical Research Council, which was reviewed by Max Perutz, then at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.
Wilkins at King's College, following a request from Crick and Watson;[15] Perutz said he had not acted unethically because the report had been part of an effort to promote wider contact between different MRC research groups and was not confidential.
Crick and Watson then sought permission from Cavendish Laboratory head William Lawrence Bragg, to publish their double-helix molecular model of DNA based on data from Franklin and Wilkins.
By November 1951, Watson had acquired little training in X-ray crystallography, by his own admission, and thus had not fully understood what Franklin was saying about the structural symmetry of the DNA molecule.
[14] Crick, however, knowing the Fourier transforms of Bessel functions that represent the X-ray diffraction patterns of helical structures of atoms, correctly interpreted further one of Franklin's experimental findings as indicating that DNA was most likely to be a double helix with the two polynucleotide chains running in opposite directions.
Crick was thus in a unique position to make this interpretation because he had formerly worked on the X-ray diffraction data for other large molecules that had helical symmetry similar to that of DNA.
