1. Protein Synthesis
DNA

2. DNA Structure
Rosalind Franklin took diffraction x-ray photographs of DNA crystals
In the 1950’s, Watson & Crick built the first model of DNA using Franklin’s x-rays

3. Frances Crick & James Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Frances Crick & James Watson
Many historians consider 1953—the year that American geneticist James Watson (1928–) and British biophysicist Francis Crick (1916–2004) famously described the structure of DNA—as the birth of modern genetics. It is important, however, to remember that the historic accomplishment of Watson and Crick was not the discovery of DNA—Miescher had identified nucleic acid in cells nearly a century earlier. Similarly, while Watson and Crick earned recognition and public acclaim for their landmark research, it would not haveFIGURE 1.8 Chargaff's rules. Argosy Publishing, Thomson Gale.been possible without the efforts of their predecessors and colleagues such as Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) and Rosalind Franklin (1920–58). Wilkins and Franklin were the molecular biologists who in 1951 obtained sharp X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA crystals, revealing a regular, repeating pattern of molecular building blocks that correspond to the components of DNA. (Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick, but Franklin was ineligible to share the prize because she died in 1958, four years before it was awarded.) Read more: The History of Genetics - Modern Genetics Emerges - Crick, Watson, Dna, and Structure
The Players—Watson and Crick
James Watson is an American geneticist known for his willingness to grapple with big scientific challenges and his expansive view of science. In The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, he chronicles his collaboration with Francis Crick to create an accurate model of DNA. He credits his inclination to take intellectual risks and venture into uncharted territory as his motivation for this ambitious undertaking.
Watson was just twenty-five years old when he announced the triumph that was hailed as one of the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century. Following this remarkable accomplishment, Watson served on the faculty of Harvard University for nearly two decades and assumed the directorship and then the presidency of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York. From 1988 toFIGURE 1.9 James Watson and Francis Crick examine a DNA model. Public domain.1992 he headed the Human Genome Project of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the effort to sequence (or discover the order of) the entire human genome.
Francis Crick was an English scientist who had studied physics before turning his attention to biochemistry and biophysics. Crick became interested in discovering the structure of DNA, and when in 1951 Watson came to work at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, the two scientists decided to work together to unravel the structure of DNA. Figure 1.9 is a photograph of the young scientists in their laboratory using a model to display the double helical (spiral) structure of DNA.
After his landmark accomplishment with Watson, Crick continued to study the relationship between DNA and genetic coding. He is credited with predicting the ways in which proteins are created and formed, a processFIGURE 1.10 Canonical B-DNA double helix models SOURCE: "Canonical B–DNA Double Helix," in Genetics, vol. 1, A–D, Macmillan Reference USA, Gale Group, 2002known as protein synthesis. During the mid-1970s Crick turned his attention to the study of brain functions, including vision and consciousness, and assumed a professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Like Watson, he received many professional awards and accolades for his work and, along with the scientific papers he and Watson coauthored, published four books. Published a decade before his death in 2004, Crick's last book, The Astonishing Hypothesis: Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Scribner, 1994), detailed his ideas and insights about human consciousness.
THE WATSON-CRICK MODEL OF DNA.
Using the X-ray images of DNA created by Franklin and Wilkins, who also worked in the Cavendish Laboratory, Watson and Crick worked out and then began to build models of DNA. Crick contributed his understanding of X-ray diffraction techniques and imaging, and relied on Watson's expertise in genetics. In 1953 Watson and Crick published the paper "A Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid" (Nature, vol. 171, April 25, 1953), which contained the famously understated first lines, "We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribonucleic acid (D.N.A.). The structure has novel features, which are of considerable biological interest." Watson and Crick then described the shape of a double helix, an elegant structure that resembles a latticework spiral staircase. (See Figure 1.10.)
Their model enabled scientists to better understand functions such as carrying hereditary information to direct protein synthesis, replication, and mutation at the molecular level. The three-dimensional Watson and Crick model consists of two strings of nucleotides connected across like a ladder. Each rung of the ladder contains an A-T pair or a G-C pair, consistent with Chargaff's rule that there is an A for every T and a G for every C in DNA. (See Figure 1.10.) Watson and Crick posited that changes in the sequence of nucleotide pairs in the double helix would produce mutations.
Read more: The History of Genetics - Modern Genetics Emerges - Crick, Watson, Dna, and Structure
Proposed double helix model 1953
X-ray diffraction photograph of DNA, 1953 3

4. Cell

5. What is DNA?
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the genetic instruction set.
It is composed of a linear sequence of units called nucleotides.
There are four different kinds of nucleotides (designated by the letters A, G, C, & T; sometimes called “bases”).
An individual DNA strand (or chromosome) may consist of 100,000’s of nucleotides.
The sequence of the nucleotides of a DNA strand determines the genetic code.

6. DNA

7. DNA Polymers made up of individual nucleotides Nucleotides contain
Phosphate group
Five carbon sugar
Ring shaped nitrogen base
DNA contains information for almost all cell activities

8. Nucleotide Structure
Nitrogen Base

9. Nucleotide Bases

10. Nucleotide Bases

11. Polynucleotides
=Nucleic Acids

12. Base Pairing
ADENINE (A)
THYMINE (T)
Chargaff’s Rule

13. Base Pairing
GUANINE (G)
CYTOSINE (C)

14. DNA is Double Stranded

15. Double-Stranded
DNA

16. copyright cmassengale
Question:
What would be the complementary DNA strand for the following DNA sequence?
DNA 5’-CGTATG-3’
copyright cmassengale

17. copyright cmassengale
Answer:
DNA 5’-CGTATG-3’
DNA 3’-GCATAC-5’
copyright cmassengale

18. Gene Expression
Transcription
Translation

19. RNA

20. Contrasting RNA with DNA
Single-stranded
Ribose
Bases
Adenine
Uracil
Guanine
Cytosine
Double-stranded
Deoxyribose
Bases
Adenine
Thymine
Guanine
Cytosine

21. Three Kinds of RNA mRNA (Messenger RNA) rRNA (Ribosomal RNA)
tRNA (Transfer RNA)

22. Ribosome

23. tRNA

24. Transcription
mRNA
DNA Sense Strand

25. Transcription
DNA Sense Strand
mRNA Transcript

26. Transcription

27. Translation
Amino Acid
tRNA
Anticodon
mRNA
Codon

28. Translation

29. Translation

30. Translation

31. Translation

32. Translation

33. Translation

34. Translation Stop codon AA AA AA AA Complete protein 1 2
U A G
A U C
Stop codon