WIKIMEDIA, APERSONOn this day (25 April) in 1953 Nature published three papers describing the structure of DNA: one from James Watson and Francis Crick of Cambridge University that proposed the now famous double helix, and two accompanying papers from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins of King’s College, London, who used X-ray diffraction images to support the helix hypothesis.
Today, 60 years later, science celebrates the ground-breaking discovery. For our part, we have published a poster outlining the history of genetics and genomics, from the initial 1953 structural findings to the completion of the draft human genome sequence 10 years ago, and especially the deluge of knowledge that has been unveiled in the last decade. We also have a series of webinars in which George Church and other leading scientists explore what the future holds for DNA research. And Genome Biology commemorates the landmark with a fascinating in-depth interview with Raymond Gosling—then a biophysics graduate student working under Wilkins and one of two named authors, along with James Watson, still alive to tell the tale.
In a story packed with fascinating, often humorous, details ...
