Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • [JUDSON:] In the early twentieth century, physicists

  • and chemists unlocked secrets of the atom

  • that changed the world forever.

  • But life remained a profound mystery.

  • Among life's deepest secrets was inheritance.

  • Everyone knew that traits like the shape of a peapod

  • or the color of eyes and hair were passed

  • on from generation to generation.

  • But no one knew how

  • such information was stored or transmitted.

  • Scientists were convinced that there had

  • to be a biological molecule at the heart of the process.

  • And that molecule had to have some pretty special qualities.

  • [CARROLL:] The three dimensional arrangement of atoms

  • in those molecules had to explain the stability of life,

  • so that traits were passed faithfully from generation

  • to generation, and also the mutability of life.

  • You have to have change in order for evolution to happen.

  • [JUDSON:] The challenge

  • of solving this mysterious arrangement of atoms,

  • this fundamental "secret of life," was taken up in 1951

  • by two unknown scientists.

  • Less than 18 months later, they would make one

  • of the great discoveries of the twentieth century.

  • They met and joined forces at the Cavendish laboratory

  • in Cambridge, England.

  • One was a 23-year-old American named James Watson.

  • [OLBY:] He had a crew cut when he first came to Cambridge,

  • and that was very rare in Cambridge in those days.

  • He liked to wear what I call gym shoes

  • and leave the laces untied and things like that.

  • He was quite an enfant terrible I would say.

  • But behind that, of course, was his extreme, intense love

  • of science right from his early years, and his determination.

  • [JUDSON:] The other was an Englishman named Francis Crick.

  • Trained as a physicist,

  • his academic career had been interrupted by the outbreak

  • of the Second World War.

  • It wasn't until 1949 that he got back into academic science.

  • He was anxious to make up for lost time

  • and now interested in biology.

  • Crick and Watson connected instantly when they met in 1951.

  • They both loved to talk science.

  • [WATSON:] Francis and I both liked ideas.

  • And as long as I could talk to Francis, I, you know,

  • felt every day was worthwhile.

  • [JUDSON:] Crick was always ready to share his thoughts,

  • though he rarely did so quietly.

  • [WATSON:] Any room he was in he was going

  • to make more noise than anyone else.

  • [LUGER:] They would constantly throw crazy ideas at each other,

  • dismiss them, have another idea, follow that a little further,

  • dismiss that, but then something comes out of left field,

  • so it's kind of this give-and-take.

  • [CRICK:] We did have different backgrounds,

  • but we had the same interests.

  • We... we both thought that finding the structure

  • of the gene was the key problem.

  • [JUDSON:] The idea of the gene dates back

  • to Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants in the 1860s.

  • By the 1920s, genes had been convincingly located inside the

  • nucleus of cells, and associated

  • with structures called chromosomes.

  • It was also known that chromosomes are made

  • of proteins, and a nucleic acid, deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.

  • That meant that genes had to be made of either DNA or protein.

  • But which was it?

  • Protein seemed the better bet.

  • There are lots of different kinds of them and they do lots

  • of different stuff inside the cell.

  • In contrast, DNA didn't seem very interesting.

  • It's just repeated units of a sugar linked to a phosphate

  • and any of four bases.

  • The readiness to dismiss DNA was so entrenched

  • that it persisted even after Oswald Avery showed

  • that it can carry genetic information.

  • [CARROLL:] Avery had isolated a substance that conveyed a trait

  • from one bacterium to another.

  • And this "transforming principle," as he called it,

  • he showed that it was not destroyed

  • by a protein-digesting enzyme but was destroyed

  • by a DNA-digesting enzyme.

  • [JUDSON:] Watson and Crick were among the few

  • who found Avery's work persuasive.

  • They thought genes were made of DNA.

  • They also thought that solving the molecular structure

  • of the molecule would reveal how genetic information is stored

  • and passed on.

  • At the time, a powerful technique

  • for solving molecular structure was being perfected:

  • x-ray crystallography.

  • [LUGER:] At its best,

  • x-ray crystallography can determine the position

  • of every single atom in the molecule that you're analyzing

  • with respect to every other single atom.

  • [JUDSON:] Not that it's easy.

  • The picture you end up with is a "diffraction pattern,"

  • and to make sense of it--to work out where the atoms are--

  • involves interpreting lengthy calculations.

  • And in the 1950s, the equipment was primitive

  • and difficult to maintain.

  • The x-ray sources weren't very bright.

  • And on top of that, DNA is not an easy molecule to work with.

  • [LUGER:] Basically, you picture snot.

  • It's kind of hard to pick it up and do stuff

  • with it, and analyze it.

  • Polymers are not fun to work with from that point of view.

  • [JUDSON:] The Cavendish was famous

  • for x-ray crystallography.

  • But the director of the lab didn't want his staff

  • x-raying DNA.

  • He knew that a group at King's College

  • in London was already doing that and he didn't want

  • to be seen as competing.

  • [WATSON:] It just wasn't...

  • good manners.

  • [JUDSON:] The King's College scientist

  • who had initiated the work on DNA was Maurice Wilkins.

  • Like Crick, he was trained as a physicist

  • and had only recently become interested

  • in biological questions.

  • Though he was drawn to the problem of the gene,

  • Wilkins lacked Watson

  • and Crick's burning urgency to find a solution.

  • Complicating things for Wilkins was his relationship

  • with his colleague Rosalind Franklin.

  • She was a talented crystallographer,

  • but when she joined the team at Kings she believed

  • that she would be leading its DNA research.

  • [LUGER:] She had the notion that this was her project,

  • he had the notion it was his project, and if anything,

  • she should help him in his effort to solve the structure,

  • and so this is a recipe for disaster.

  • [JUDSON:] The times and their personalities worked

  • against an effective partnership.

  • [LUGER:] This was a time when it was very, very hard for women

  • in science to be taken seriously and so I would imagine

  • that Rosalind Franklin had to be perhaps quite assertive.

  • [JUDSON:] She certainly asserted her independence.

  • Wilkins, by all accounts a shy man, reluctantly agreed

  • that they would work separately.

  • London is only 75 miles from Cambridge.

  • That means that Watson and Crick could easily keep tabs

  • on the work being done at Kings.

  • But another potential competitor was thousands

  • of miles away, in California.

  • Linus Pauling was renowned

  • as the greatest physical chemist of his generation.

  • He was widely admired for his ability

  • to build accurate models of complex molecules.

  • Watson and Crick were convinced it was just a matter

  • of time before Pauling used this technique to solve DNA.

  • Biological molecules come in a variety of shapes.

  • Pauling, and Watson and Crick,

  • suspected DNA might be a helix of some kind.

  • But if so, how were the sugar, the phosphate

  • and the bases arranged?

  • Early in his collaboration with Watson, Crick had worked

  • out mathematically what the x-ray diffraction pattern

  • of a helical molecule should look like.

  • Shortly afterwards, Watson went to London

  • to hear Franklin report on some of her recent work.

  • When he got back, he told Crick what he remembered of her talk,

  • and they decided to build a model.

  • In a few days, they had one.

  • It was a helix, with three sugar-phosphate chains

  • on the inside, and the bases sticking out.

  • [LUGER:] At that time the only interesting thing

  • about the DNA molecule is the bases.

  • And so it made perfect sense, I mean,

  • only an idiot would put them inside

  • because then they're hidden.

  • [JUDSON:] They invited Wilkins and Franklin

  • to come and take a look.

  • Unfortunately, Watson had misremembered some

  • of her key measurements.

  • Franklin saw this immediately, and quickly

  • and derisively dismissed their effort.

  • She went to craft a mocking announcement

  • for the death of DNA as a helix.

  • It was an embarrassment that did not sit well

  • with the Cavendish leadership.

  • [WATSON:] We were forbidden in a sense to work on DNA.

  • [JUDSON:] The failure of the first model was painful,

  • but it can also be seen as just part of the scientific process.

  • [LUGER:] I would actually maintain that,

  • in order to arrive at the right solution, you have to put

  • out a couple of wrong ones.

  • And that's just the nature of discovery, and if you're afraid

  • of making a mistake, you're going to fail in this business.

  • [JUDSON:] Through 1952, Watson and Crick read and talked

  • over anything and everything that could prove relevant

  • for their ongoing-- but now underground--

  • quest to discover the structure of DNA.

  • [WATSON:] To me there was only one way I could be happy...

  • or two ways, you know: solve DNA or get a girlfriend...

  • [laughs] and I didn't get a girlfriend, so it was solve DNA.

  • [JUDSON:] The year ended with Watson and Crick thinking

  • about DNA, Franklin taking pictures of DNA,

  • Wilkins avoiding Franklin, and Pauling a distant

  • but worrisome presence.

  • Then, in January 1953, everything changed.

  • News came that Pauling was indeed preparing a paper

  • on the structure of DNA.

  • Watson secured a copy of the manuscript.

  • And found, to his great relief,

  • that Pauling was proposing a triple helix.

  • It was very similar to the one that he

  • and Crick had been shamed into abandoning the previous year.

  • Relieved, he headed to London to share the news

  • that the race for DNA wasn't over.

  • Only to find that Rosalind Franklin wasn't particularly

  • interested in what he had to say.

  • [OLBY:] Following his departure

  • from Rosalind Franklin's room he encountered Wilkins,

  • and Wilkins took him into his room and then took

  • out of a drawer a picture

  • which had been taken by Rosalind Franklin.

  • [JUDSON:] That picture would become one

  • of the most famous images in all biology: Franklin's Photo 51.

  • Jim Watson recognized the diffraction pattern

  • immediately-- it was a helix.

  • And based on this,

  • Watson thought it might have just two chains: a double helix.

  • About the same time, Francis Crick was shown a report

  • on Franklin's work that included an observation

  • on the symmetry of DNA.

  • This led Crick to a crucial insight

  • that Franklin had missed: the two backbones had to run

  • in opposite directions.

  • That led him to the conclusion

  • that the sugar-phosphate backbones had to be

  • on the outside with the bases inside.

  • So Watson started to build models again.

  • He experimented with pairing like-with-like:

  • adenine with adenine, thymine with thymine, and so on.

  • That would make each chain identical.

  • Watson thought that could explain how genetic information

  • is stored.

  • He thought he had the solution.

  • But then a Cambridge colleague told him

  • that the bases could not pair with themselves in that way.

  • And Crick pointed out that the model didn't take account

  • of something else that was known about DNA.

  • A few years earlier, another chemist interested in DNA,

  • Erwin Chargaff, had reported a puzzling fact

  • about the molecule.

  • [LUGER:] He analyzed the chemical composition of DNA

  • in different species and what he found is that the amount of As,

  • the base adenine, and the amount of base Ts, was always the same.

  • And Gs and Cs were always the same.

  • [JUDSON:] But no one, including Chargaff,

  • had figured out what those base ratios meant.

  • With Chargaff's data in mind, Jim Watson went alone

  • to the lab one Saturday morning and started playing

  • with cardboard cutouts.

  • [WATSON:] I began moving them around.

  • And I wanted an arrangement, you know, where I had a big

  • and a small molecule, and, uh, so how did you do it?

  • Somehow you had to form link bonds.

  • So, here's an A and here's T, and I wanted this hydrogen

  • to point directly at this nitrogen,

  • so I had something like this.

  • Oh! So then I went to the other pair

  • and I wanted this nitrogen to point to this one.

  • And it went like this.

  • Whoa! They looked the same.

  • And you can put one right on top of the other.

  • [music plays]

  • We knew we could just...

  • even if we go up to the ceiling,

  • we're building a tiny fraction of the molecule.

  • Hundreds of millions of these base pairs in one molecule,

  • all fitting into this wonderful symmetry

  • which we saw the morning of February 28, 1953.

  • [JUDSON:] The model fit the measurements,

  • both from the x-ray diffraction pictures

  • and from Chargaff's data.

  • But most important of all, the arrangement

  • of the bases immediately revealed how DNA works.

  • [CRICK:] The key aspect

  • of the structure was the complementary nature

  • of the bases.

  • If you had a big one on this side you had

  • to have a particular small one on this side or vice-versa,

  • and so on, all the way up.

  • So it meant that you could easily make...

  • by separating the two chains,

  • you could then easily make a new complementary copy,

  • by just obeying these pairing rules

  • of which one went with what.

  • And that solved in one blow the whole idea

  • of how you replicate a gene.

  • [JUDSON:] The structure immediately revealed two things:

  • how genetic information is stored,

  • and how changes, or mutations, happen.

  • The information is stored by the sequence of the bases.

  • Mutations occur when the sequence is changed.

  • [WATSON:] It's a simpler and better answer

  • than we'd ever dared hope for.

  • [CRICK:] I remember an occasion when Jim gave a talk--

  • it's true they gave him one or two drinks before dinner--

  • it was rather a short talk, because all he could say

  • at the end was, "well, you see, it's so pretty, it's so pretty."

  • [WATSON:] I think everyone just took joy in it

  • because the field needed it.

  • But on the other hand, you know [laughs],

  • the Biochemistry Department didn't invite us

  • to give a seminar on it.

  • [CARROLL:] When the structure of the double helix was revealed,

  • most biologists instantly recognized the power

  • of the explanation before them.

  • Here was this beautiful molecule

  • that could explain both the stability of life

  • over huge amounts of time and its mutability in evolution.

  • [JUDSON:] Their triumph was reported in the journal Nature.

  • It made headlines around the world.

  • And was celebrated nine years later with a Nobel Prize.

  • [LUGER:] That's kind of what every scientist dreams about:

  • to make a discovery that has this kind of impact.

  • [CARROLL:] For biologists, the discovery

  • of the double helix opened up a whole new world.

  • It was a passport to all the mysteries of life,

  • mysteries that biologists have been decoding ever since.

[JUDSON:] In the early twentieth century, physicists

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it