The Stubborn Gene

WHAT 'WATSON-CRICK' HAD IN MIND AT THAT TIME

In the last century, James D Watson and Francis Crick realized that DNA holds the key to the nature of living things and stores the hereditary information in it, which passes from one generation to the next. It plans this incredibly complex world as it is. Hence they called it the secret of life.

It was already proposed that DNA molecules consist of multiple copies of a single basic unit, the nucleotide, which comes in four forms: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). But its assembly was yet to be unraveled. It was James Watson who in spite of being a younger fellow proposed that (A) can fit neatly with (T), and (G) with (C). He suggested that perhaps the DNA molecule consists of two chains linked together by A-T and G-C pairs.

When Francis Crick heard this from James Watson, he straightaway realized that Watson's pairing idea implied a double helix structure with two molecular chains running in opposite directions. The way they organized the molecule immediately suggested solutions to two of biology's oldest mysteries: how hereditary information is stored,and how it is replicated.

In those days the scientific world was disordered with questions such as: Does life have some magical, mystical essence, or is it, like any chemical reaction carried out in a science class, the product of normal physical and chemical processes? Is there something divine at the heart of a cell that brings it to life? Well! the double helix answered that question with a definitive No.