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The Race for all the Marbles:
Okay, so the GIF's a bit misleading, but we dig its 1950s cachet. And in fact, the 1950's was when the structure of DNA was discovered! See, scientists knew for a while that DNA held all the genetic marbles, but none of them knew quite how. (Genetic marbles, unlike glass marbles, are mighty complex!)
So a bunch of mighty smart guys and gals went about searching for its structure. It wasn't that easy, DNA can't be seen with a microscope (that's why the GIF's so wrong). So this lady, Dr. Rosalind
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Franklin and her partner in crime, Dr. Maurice Wilkins came up with a most triumphant means of seeing DNA. They separated little strands of DNA and ran X-rays through them. This projected a larger
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picture of the molecule, and they could read its shape. The shape was an X.
Franklin wasn't sure how to interpret the |
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shape, so she showed the picture to the young Dr. James Watson and his pal Dr. Francis Crick. They raced into their lab and threw together some big molecule-shaped tinker toys—and click! they figured out the structure. (A double helix—like two intertwined, winding staircases.)
Knowing DNA's structure was the key to advancing Genetics into serious molecular biology, and it paved the way for many cheesy science graphics as well.
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