DNA Part 2

Hi everyone. I'm back to share another inspired by page with you and also over at Art Journal Journey Sorry  about the wait of a few days.

This month Chris from Pear Shaped Crafting and I are hosting in memory of Eileen.

My page today is inspired by DNA once again. DNA is really an amazing microscopic chemical. If you think about how this little ladder shaped material can determine who we are and how we function. And just as amazing is how we were passed our DNA from our parents, and they get theirs from their parents. 

Et cetera. It still amazes me that if you get your DNA tested, the company that does it (like say Ancestry) can match you up to relatives based on similarities in parts of your DNA. It all makes sense scientifically, but I think  the connection to your past is still rather astonishing.

Sunday I told you about how scientists discovered the structure of DNA. Today I will talk about the rest of the story.

Part 2 of the Story

Recap:

James Watson and Francis Crick built a model of DNA. They were able to do that because Watson saw a very clear photograph that another scientist, Rosalind Franklin, took with x-rays and crystallized DNA.  Franklin did not know that these men saw her photo, because somehow her co-worker, Maurice Wilkins, got a hold of it and showed it to Watson. It is one thing to openly share info, it is another to share something that isn't yours without the owner's permission.

When the articles I wrote about Sunday were published in Nature, Watson's and Crick worded their's to sound like they had not seen Rosalind Franklin's photo 51. When in fact, Watson had seen the photo.

After the Papers Were Published:

The story here really concentrates on Rosalind Franklin.  Because she was not happy working on DNA at Kings College, she finished her research, and then left to work with Aaron Klug at Birkbeck College in London.  She and Klug were studying very large molecules including those that make up viruses.

The sad news was that  shortly after joining Klug, Rosalind Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died at age 37  in 1958. You might remember, she worked with x-rays, and there was not all the safety factors we now have.

In 1962, Crick, Wilkins and Watson each received the Nobel Prize for the work to discover DNA's structure. Franklin, because she had died, could not get the award because it is never given posthumously. 

In 1982, Aaron Klug received the Nobel Prize for his work on large molecules, the work he started with Rosalind Franklin.  He at least mentioned Rosalind Franklin and her contribution during his Nobel Prize speech, which did not happen at the 1962 Nobel prize ceremony for Watson, Crick and Wilkins, even though it was her photo that allowed Watson and Crick to build their model. 

If  you think about it, Franklin would have gotten 2 Nobel prizes had she lived, one for her DNA work and one for her large molecule work.

From an internet article about Rosalind Franklin.

I think this would have been the end of the story except that James Watson decided to write a book about how the structure of DNA was discovered. Originally it was supposed to be publish by Harvard as more of a scientific book, but since most of the people involved were still alive, Harvard had asked them to read a  draft of the book and comment.

In this book Watson was not flattering to Rosalind Franklin, and many people, including Crick and Wilkins, said so. He wrote that if she fixed her hair differently and wore make up she might be attractive. He  also referred to her as  the terrible Rosy, a not so nice name the men called her behind her back. Here she was, a very accomplished woman who had died and without whom they would not have been able to build their model as quickly as they did. Yet Watson made her out to be self-centered  "little" woman who was unwilling to show the men her photos, as though her job was to find information for them.

Because of this. Harvard decided not to publish the book. Instead, it was published by a mass market publisher, and the book went on to be a big seller. Probably a much bigger seller than if Harvard had published it.

This book is actually a quick and interesting read, more like a Hollywood expose (I know this word needs a little accent over the final e)  rather than a story of a major scientific find.

The publication of this book  caused many of Rosalind Franklin's family and friends to speak out about how she was portrayed. They were anxious to restore her name. 

Their campaign did bring many people to have a new view of what Rosalind Franklin achieved. A friend published a book about her. Other's began to add to her role to the story, making her a more important player than Watson did in his book.  Hopefully Rosalind Franklin will be remembered for the accomplished woman she was.

All three of the men went on to have long and very successful careers. 

The only one of the 4 scientists directly involved with the DNA structure now left alive is James D. Watson. He is 93, and he went on to have a distinguished career himself working at prominent labs and heading (for awhile) the US's part of the Human Genome Project. He has had some flack however for some of the other public comments he has made during his life. Some of those have had to do with comments that sound almost like he believes (which he may or may not) in eugenics, which is the belief that some races or groups of people are more genetically fit than others. However, one  other interesting thing about Watson is that there are some women scientists that he has helped in big ways in their careers.

There are so many sides to people, aren't there? 

That is not to say that any of these men were/are bad people. In the 1950's science was still a man's world where women were usually just the "helpers".  Times have changed since then, and now more women are working in science and not just being the "helpers".

That doesn't mean that using Franklin's photo 51 without her knowledge was the right thing to do. It would have been interesting to see how the story went if Rosalind Franklin had lived.

Should you be interested in Rosalind Franklin, author Brenda Maddox wrote a very good book about her. There is also a NOVA show (which might be available outside of the US on Netflix) called The Secret of Photo 51.

Rosalind Franklin has become an inspiration for many women in science.  

Watson also wrote a couple of other DNA related books. There are also books by Wilkins and Crick. 

There is also an older film (1987) by the BBC called The Race for the Double Helix.  That film take a more Watson and Crick view. I am not sure but it seems like it is based in Watson's The Double Helix book.

Hope you've enjoyed your little biology lesson.

And hope you week is going well also.

 

DNA Day

Happy Sunday everyone. Hope your weekend is going well.

My page today for Art Journal Journey  and this month's Inspired By theme is to celebrate one of the other hats I wear. That is my biologist side.

Today is DNA day, the day back in in 1953 when the 4 scientists who worked on discovering the structure of DNA published their papers in the scientific journal Nature.

My journal page was made with some new Paper Artsy stamps that are DNA like with the double helix shape (spiral staircase-twisted ladder shape) and the base pairs in the middle. I stamped them in pink and black, and then I stamped in green the letters of the chemicals that form the steps of the ladders, known as the base pairs. You can see the AT and CG combinations in green. I also added a bit of washi tape with some stitching on it, because DNA stitches itself together in a way, and I also added a bit from an old illustrated science dictionary. The 4 Janet Klein figures represent the 4 people involved in DNA's structure discovery, and the Marie Curie quote is from another Paper Artsy set, even though she personally never worked on DNA.

The story of DNA's discovery is one for the annals of thief, acclaim and human nature not always at its best.

I used to always share this story with my kids at school, but since this year there are no kids at school, I will share it with you. It is a bit of a read. Sorry about that.  Maybe you will be interested or have the time to read it. I assure you this is a very condensed version as most of the people involved have written long books about this. If not, I enjoyed writing this.

The Background:

This story has  2 sets of characters. I need to briefly explain them first. The 2 people on the left on my page are Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. 

Rosalind Franklin  was a distinguished British researcher and crystallographer. Crystallography is a technique used to get x-ray photos of microscopic items, such a molecules. It uses x-rays to make images on film. Franklin had been working in Paris and had become one of the best crystallographers in the world when she decided to move back to England. She took a job at King's College in London to work with DNA.

Maurice Wilkins was also at King's College working with DNA. He was away on holiday when Franklin arrived. Somehow, roles were never clear and Franklin believed she was in charge of the DNA research. When Wilkins returned and saw that Franklin was doing what he believed was his own job, there were a lot of not so nice feelings.

The 2 people on the right of my page are Francis Crick and James D. Watson. Crick was at the Cavendish Laboratory, a part of Cambridge University, working on an advanced degree. Watson, an American, came to the Cavendish on a fellowship and ended up sharing an office with Crick. Those 2 hit it off and were great office mates.

The Events:

Here's were things start to get complicated.

Watson  was one of those extremely bright people who was working on advanced work. He had earned his PhD at age 22 in the states and still at a very young age, went onto to do some advance work at the Cavendish. He believed (rightly so) that anyone who discovered the secret of the gene would be set for life.  He managed to get Crick onboard, even though Crick was still working on hemoglobin structure for his PhD thesis. So Watson and Crick began to work on building a model of DNA.

Their methods were a bit different from the usual. Instead of doing research and using their own data, they used information from many other people's research. They found a lot of information that way, but they still didn't know the shape of DNA.

There's another plot twist.  Crick and Wilkins, although they worked at different universities, were friends. Wilkins was not happy to come back from his holiday and discover his DNA research was now being run by Rosalind Franklin. He called her secretive as well as a few other things. Most likely, based on what I have read and seen about her, she wanted her research to be thorough and complete before she shared it.  She wanted plenty of data to back up her conclusions.  She didn't think of Wilkins as her boss since they were equally qualified scientists, and so, why should she share when nothing was complete? 

The lab of Kings College London, where Franklin was researching, was also not very welcoming to women. She must have been very unhappy with her environment, but very happy with her research.  

Watson met Wilkins through his friendship with Crick. He was warned by Wilkins about Franklin's unfriendly character. Watson went to see Franklin to try to get her on board, but she snapped at him and he went away afraid of her. At least that is how Watson described it in his 1960's bestseller The Double Helix.

Photo 51:

Maurice Wilkins on the left, Photo 51 in the middle, and Rosalind Franklin on the right

OK, I'm going to skip some things and leave out some important people (just to get to the point) and jump to photo 51. Rosalind Franklin took this photo (her 51st) with  x-ray crystallography that proved DNA was a double helix, that twisted ladder shaped structure that I stamped on my page. The photo proves that DNA is a twisted ladder/ double helix because of the X shape. Picture standing on the top of a spiral ladder and looking down on the ladder. You would see an X shaped structure, with a point where the 2 sides of the ladder cross each other as they twist. That point where they cross is the center of the X in the photo. Each of the 2 arms of the X (the one going left to right and the one going right to left) would each be a strand. You can even count how many steps would be in each single twist of the DNA from this photo, but let me get on with the story.

Franklin thought she had filed the photo away with her other research notes, but somehow, the photo made its way to her co-worker Maurice Wilkins. Franklin didn't know about this. I don't think Wilkins actually stole the photo, but there were graduate students working in the labs, and one of them probably went to show it to Wilkins.

Wilkins showed the photo to Watson. Watson took notes and went back to Cambridge and shared the info with Crick.

That was all Crick and Watson needed to start building their model. 

Watson and Crick felt that finding the structure of DNA was something they needed to do quickly. There were other scientists working on this same problem in other places. One of them was a very distinguished chemist named Linus Pauling in California.

Linus' son Peter came to the Cavendish on a research fellowship also. Therefore Watson and Crick were learning information about his father's research from him. Linus Pauling tried making a bigger helix than the yet to be discovered 2 stranded one, but knowing this made Watson feel that he and Crick really had to charge forward to beat Linus Pauling to the "prize" (the actual structure of DNA).

The Model:

This is a very famous photo of Watson (left) and Crick (right) with their finished model.

At this time Franklin had made plans to leave Kings College to go to another research facility. She first wanted to finish her research. Wilkins, while talking to Watson and Crick, said as soon as Franklin was gone the 3 of them could start working on the model.

Watson didn't want to wait for Franklin to leave. Now that he had seen photo 51, he and Crick got permission to start building their own model. (This was actually their second attempt because the first model they tried was  checked by Rosalind Franklin herself,  and she said it couldn't happen. She was that qualified that her word meant the model was wrong.)

So Watson and Crick built their model, and Franklin, unaware that Watson had seen her photo, went to check  out this latest model. She said that  it all matched what she had found in her research. Many other scientists also agreed. 

So Watson and Crick had built the model of the structure of DNA.

In order that everyone involved could get some credit, the scientific  journal Nature agreed to publish 3 articles on this day in 1953. Watson and Crick wrote one, Wilkins wrote a second about his research, and Rosalind Franklin wrote the third about her research. 

This is only half of the story however. 

I'll be back to share the rest of it with you on Wednesday.

Enjoy what's left to your weekend and the start of the new week.

 

DNA DAY

In college I studied biology and now I teach biology at the high school level.

Inside, I am a geek.

Major geek.

A creative geek none-the-less, but still a geek.

And today, for us biology geeks,

is a very notible day.

DNA Day.

On this day in 1953, Watson and Crick

the 2 guys you see here-

published their  paper in Nature outlining their "discovery"

about how DNA is constructed.

I say discovery in quotes because it is questionable if they

actually discovered anything.

They just used other people's information to figure out how the DNA molecule

was configured.

Here are the 4 main players in this story.

(There are a few others, but for the sake of a blog post versus a novel, I shall leave it to these 4.)

James D. Watson (far left) and American who was working with Francis Crick (not so far left) at Cambridge University. These are the guys who made the model.

The 2 on the right are Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, who both worked at Kings College London. There were some not so pleasant "issues" between those 2 in the x-ray crystallography lab. They just did not get along with each other and Rosalind was a woman in a very old fashioned man's world. She couldn't even join her co-worker's in the lounge as it was for men only, yet she was a woman scientist with a PhD and some very very impressive credits to her name.  Rosalind took a very distinctive photo

which shows that DNA, the stuff of our genes, has a double helical shape.

(For those you you who may be saying Huh?, helical means a spiral-like shape. You can tell this is a spiral because if you can picture looking down from above onto a spiral, you would get this X like shape where each part of the double spiral cross. That's a very simplistic description, but again, for the sake of simplicity, I'll leave it there.)

Somehow Wilkins got a hold of the photo.

He passed it on Watson, quite innocently perhaps.

Or maybe not.

But he had the photo and he showed it to Watson.

This allowed Watson and Crick to build their famous model, write their paper which was published today in 1953 in Nature, and to become known as the men who discovered the structure of DNA.

Wilkins gets credited too, as he was working at one point on DNA xray crystallography, and Franklin does get credit also, although I don't know if she ever really realized what role she played since she left Kings College and then shortly after that died from cancer in the late 1950's. She was very young- if my memory serves me right like 37 or 38. Both Wilkins and Franklin also published papers along with the Watson and Crick artical- all 3 were published together. Unfortunately Watson published a best selling book about this event called the Double Helix in the 1960's which didn't portray Rosalind Franklin very nicely. This in turn started the whole idea that Franklin was not given the credit she deserved, and now there's a whole bunch of science geeks like me who are very much in credit in giving this lady the credit she deserves. Afterall, neither Watson nor Crick could have built there model without her photo.

For a couple of good films on this science history- the BBC put out the film race for the Double Helix in the 1970's with Jeff Goldbloom and also there's a Nova documentary called The Secret of Photo 51. (The photo I showed you above was photo 51.)

And then there's bibliographies of all these people-

if you really want to geek out.

Personally, I think its a great story.

But then as I have told you like 50 times already today-

I can be pretty geeky.

Thanks for visiting-

and remember,

you wouldn't be who you are without your deoxyribonucleic acid!

(Or DNA)