DNA Lab Party at 4 PM: Staph only!

April 25, 2013 9:38 AM

Celebrate the 60th anniversary of the discovery of DNA's structure with a pictorial story behind DNA's double helix and the Rosalind Franklin papers, including correspondences and lab notes that detail some of her crystallography research, findings that laid the groundwork for Watson and Crick's later publication.
posted by Blazecock Pileon (6 comments total)

Also, Francois Jacob passed away recently. "A biologist who shared a Nobel Prize in 1965, Dr. Francois Jacob helped unlock the mysteries of RNA."

The seminal insight into those questions came from three biologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris — Dr. Francois Jacob, Jacques Monod and Andre Lwoff. They identified messenger RNA which, as the name implies, carries the blueprint for a protein from cellular DNA to the ribosome, where proteins are built. They also identified the complex system of regulatory genes that turn protein-making genes on and off.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:55 AM on April 25, 2013

As someone who has done a lot of kitchen work, +1 for the Staph gag.
posted by marienbad at 10:16 AM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Related craft project! Build a double helix out of licorice and jelly babies.
posted by Joh at 11:27 AM on April 25, 2013

Nature recently started a podcast series looking back at their archives (a PastCast, apparently) and their first episode looks back at this topic:

Nature PastCast - April 1953: 60 years ago next week, James Watson and Francis Crick published their famous paper proposing a structure for DNA. Everyone knows that story – but fewer people know that there were actually three papers about DNA in that issue. Here we uncover the evidence that brought Watson and Crick to their conclusion, discuss how the papers were received at the time, and hear from one scientist who was actually there: co-author of one of the DNA papers, Raymond Gosling.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:57 AM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was a little surprised to see Rosalind Franklin on Gawker today(!). I made cakes to celebrate DNA60. They are now gone.
posted by armacy at 1:06 PM on April 25, 2013

You might be a geek if you find yourself thinking about purines and pyrimidine and how to place the toothpicks in the licorice and jelly baby article such that you get a major grove and a minor groove.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:07 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]