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Title: Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution by Victor K. McElheny ISBN: 0-7382-0341-6 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: People and molecular biology, a great combination
Comment: Victor K. McElheny, the author of WATSON AND DNA, worked under Watson at Cold Spring Harbor on the north shore of Long Island, New York, as director of Banbury Center from 1978 to 1982, organizing conferences on environmental sources of cancer. This did not attract much money. Support from the National Cancer Institute "took the form of book purchases." (p. 175). Industry had to provide funding when deficits became severe, but Watson was willing to provide credit for others when money came in. "Watson said that a conference on patenting life forms that I staged in 1981 had opened the way to the $7.5 million research cooperation between CSHL and Exxon." (p. 176). There is a site map of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on page 173, and I needed to page through the book to find it, since there is no list of illustrations. Page 58 showing DNA DOUBLE HELIX and FOUR BASES AS BASE PAIRS OF DNA is a schematic from MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OF THE CELL by Bruce Alberts et al. An X-ray image of DNA made by Rosalind Franklin in May 1952 is shown on the third page of photographs following page 178.
The twentieth century produced some individual thinkers, and in scientific research those who were determined to be the first to provide an answer were seen by experts who had patiently acquired their knowledge as aspiring upstarts. Anyone who could help them was likely to be like Erwin Chargaff, when Francis Crick "forgot which base was which. He did not know which bases had NH[subscript]2, amino groups. You could always look these up in a book! Chargaff drew the formulas for the two smart alecks. They were so ignorant. He recalled, `I never met two men who knew so little and aspired to so much.' They talked a lot about the `pitch' of the bases with respect to the long axis of DNA. After the humiliating interview, Chargaff jotted a note: `two pitchmen in search of a helix.' He was not in a hurry to find the DNA structure. Watson and Crick's ambition, and their worry about Pauling's beating them to the structure, left Chargaff cold." (p. 48).
One of the keys to the structure was that "It possessed a type of symmetry called `monoclinic C2,' which specified that the two helical chains ran in opposite directions. . . . In ten turns, then, the rung-like pairs of bases would be repeated, implying a rotation of 36 degrees from one base pair to the next." (p. 55). It took a long time to get the proper form of molecules for the basic structure, with NH[subscript]2 instead of NH groups. Watson was working with "enol" forms instead of "keto" until the fourth week of February, 1953, when Jerry Donahue convinced Watson which shapes were basic. "The particular tautomeric form governed which hydrogen bonds could form between bases. With enol, it wouldn't work. With keto it would. Donohue's intervention was vital." (p. 56).
The number of people working in molecular biology has increased so much since the basic elements of the field were figured out in this fashion that readers of this book are unlikely to achieve the fame acquired by many of the people this book describes. Few will have the opportunity to go "to Fort Detrick, Maryland, the heavily guarded enclave where the military tried to make biological weapons out of deadly pathogens, and soon found that, as Watson said, `there was nothing good to tell the President.' The pathogens were useless in a superpower conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, each with thousands of nuclear warheads." (p. 216). Ultimately, "Said Watson, `You can't imagine them banning anything they thought would work.' " (p. 217). This book does not reach the point of trying to find WMD so we can ban them all over again, in places we sold them to after "Watson's Harvard colleague Matthew Meselson helped convince President Nixon to stop the work and destroy supplies." (p. 217).
Consider this book an investment in our future that will cost you much less than Exxon was willing to pay to learn how to patent life forms.
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Title: DNA : The Secret of Life by Andrew Berry, James D. Watson ISBN: 0375415467 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix by James D. Watson ISBN: 0375412832 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 29 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox ISBN: 0060184078 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James D. Watson ISBN: 074321630X Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: How to Win the Nobel Prize: An Unexpected Life in Science by J. Michael Bishop ISBN: 0674008804 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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