Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure For Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid - The Nature of The Discovery

The Nature of The Discovery

Watson and Crick's 1953 article describes the answer to a fundamental mystery about living organisms. The nature of their discovery was distinctive and in some ways unsurprising. What is hidden in the technical jargon of the title is that Rosalind Franklin's discovery of the chemical structure of DNA finally revealed to Watson and Crick how genetic instructions are stored inside organisms and passed from generation to generation.

It is occasionally said that Watson and Crick identified ("cracked") the genetic code in this paper, but this work was done later, mostly by other researchers (see Genetic code#Discovery).

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