The Triple Helix

“We have seen Paulings paper on Nucleic Acid. Have you? It contains several very bad mistakes. In addition, we suspect he has chosen the wrong type of model.“ -James Watson, letter to Max Delbrück, February 20, 1953. We were very interested to see that a model of the Pauling-Corey “triple helix” structure of DNA has [...]

DNA: The Aftermath

The solving of the double helix structure of DNA is now considered to be one of the most important discoveries in modern scientific history. The structure itself suggested a possible mechanism for its own replication, and it also opened up a huge window of opportunity for advances in multiple fields ranging from biology to genetics [...]

Letters to Peter

“You know how children are threatened ‘You had better be good or the bad ogre will come get you.’ Well, for more than a year, Francis and others have been saying to the nucleic acid people at King’s ‘You had better work hard or Pauling will get interested in nucleic acids.’” -Peter Pauling. Letter to [...]

Chargaff’s Rules

“We have created a mechanism that makes it practically impossible for a real genius to appear. In my own field the biochemist Fritz Lipmann or the much-maligned Linus Pauling were very talented people. But generally, geniuses everywhere seem to have died out by 1914. Today, most are mediocrities blown up by the winds of the [...]

The Hershey-Chase Blender Experiments

“When asked what his idea of happiness would be, [Hershey] replied, ‘to have an experiment that works, and do it over and over again.’” – Jonathan Hodgkin, 2001 In 1944 the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiments demonstrated that DNA, rather than proteins, is the carrier of genetic information.  Though the work appeared to be well-supported, and was endorsed [...]

The Passport Imbroglio

A quick glance at the “Today in Linus Pauling” widget found at the top of the left sidebar of the Pauling Blog gives an excellent representation of the span and influence of Linus Pauling’s career. Rarely does a day go by where he didn’t write at least one manuscript or give a speech at a [...]

The X-Ray Crystallography that Propelled the Race for DNA: Astbury’s Pictures vs. Franklin’s Photo 51

During their so-called race to discover the structure of DNA, Linus Pauling and the unlikely pair of James Watson and Francis Crick utilized remarkably similar approaches in attempting to solve the riddle of the genetic material. In fact, one of the main tactics used by Watson and Crick was to approach the problem in the [...]

Oswald Avery’s Pneumococcus Experiments: Forerunner of the DNA Story

DNA, although now known to be extremely important, was overlooked for quite some time. Until early 1953, around when the Watson and Crick structure of DNA was published, most major scientists thought that proteins, rather than DNA, were probably the site of the gene. In the early 1940s however, experiments performed by Oswald T. Avery [...]

The Watson and Crick Structure of DNA

Today, our series on models of DNA is concluded with a discussion of the correct structure determined by James Watson and Francis Crick. Although they made an unlikely pair, the two men succeeded where one of the era’s leading scientists – Linus Pauling – failed, and in the process they unraveled the secrets of what [...]

The Pauling-Corey Structure of DNA

Today, the structure of DNA series is continued with the model proposed by Linus Pauling and Robert Corey in 1953. As a result of insufficient data and an overloaded research schedule, Pauling’s structure turned out to be incorrect. However, it is interesting to see the ways in which one of the world’s leading scientists went [...]