Piecing Together the Puzzle of DNA
It is now 50 years since the structure of DNA was determined. Three men received the Nobel Prize for the scientific breakthrough. Yet the one woman who played a vital role, Rosalind Franklin, did not. Was she less deserving? Or was it because she was a woman? Or was it just because Nobel Prizes are never awarded posthumously?
Take a step back in time. The date is 28 February 1953 and it’s lunchtime in The Eagle Pub in Cambridge, England. Drinkers are sipping on their pints exchanging stories on what would otherwise be an uneventful day. Suddenly, a man rushes in and exclaims: “We have discovered the secret of life!”
The man was Francis Crick. Whether the lunchtime crowd at The Eagle Pub realised it or not, the discovery he was talking about would revolutionise biology. What Crick called the secret of life was the now familiar double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (or DNA). In determining its structure, scientists had the vital missing link needed to start understanding genetics.
In 1962, James Watson and Francis Crick, together with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for their discovery. Yet, the woman without which the breakthrough would not have been possible, was not acknowledged. Tragically, she had succumbed to ovarian cancer four years earlier, dying at the young age of 37.
Rosalind Franklin was the chemist whose X-ray pictures of DNA gave Watson important clues about the structure of DNA, a puzzle she hoped to solve herself. In 1951, she was invited to King’s College in London to join a laboratory headed by John Randall studying living cells. She was assigned to lead a team working on DNA.
DNA is the molecule that contains the genetic information in cells. Understanding its structure has enabled scientists to study genes and explain inheritance – the way characteristics pass from one generation to the next in all organisms. It has paved the way for such controversial research as genetically modified food and the cloning of Dolly the sheep.
The laboratory’s second-in-command, Maurice Wilkins, was away at the time Franklin started working there. When he returned he misunderstood her role. In an era where women were not allowed to eat lunch in the university dining halls and Franklin’s colleagues went to men-only pubs after hours, it is perhaps not surprising that Wilkins assumed she was a technical assistant. In fact, the two scientists were peers.
In another laboratory at Cambridge University, the race was on. Watson and Crick were also studying DNA and were determined to be the first to find its structure. They knew that DNA contained, amongst other things, four kinds of chemical bases. However, they were trying to work out how these bases fitted together with the rest of the molecule.
The answer came when Watson visited London fifty years ago. Wilkins showed him one of Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray pictures of DNA, without her permission. It was the vital clue Watson needed and within a few days, Watson and Crick had pieced together the double helix structure of DNA. Nine years later the three men were rewarded with a Nobel Prize.
"I think if I’d known how much it gave him some sort of kick, I certainly would have thought twice before showing it to him," Wilkins has said. “I think it was just the switch, that DNA was helical.” These comments were seen in a video at the DNA50 exhibition which visited Questacon. The DNA50 exhibition was produced by the British Council and toured Australia, as part of a celebration of the fifty year anniversary of the discovery of DNA.
There is debate as to how much credit Franklin is due. Some say she was close to solving the DNA structure herself. A different view is expressed in the DNA50 exhibition video: "Rosalind Franklin was brilliant at her techniques at X-ray crystallography,” says Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College, London. “And she came out with these wonderful pictures. However, she didn’t have that magical moment, that sort of artistic shift which allowed her to see what those pictures were actually telling her.”
What is clear, is that Franklin was a remarkable female scientist who played a meaningful role in determining the structure of DNA. Fifty years after its discovery, in today’s society, it can only be hoped that her contributions will now be recognised.
By Ruth Beran
Shell Questacon Science Circus 2003
For further information look at these websites:
http://www.yourgenome.org
http://www.CultureLab-UK.com
http://www.britishcouncil.org.au
http://www.nobel.se/help/faq/nominations.html