This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

A Personal Commentary

Joshua Lederberg, PhD

JAMA. 1993;269(15):1981-1985.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THE ARTICLE published by Watson and Crick in 1953¹ was the landmark pointer to our contemporary model of DNA as a macromolecular structure. This lay on a well-worn path of biophysical analysis, reducing microscopic anatomy to the molecular level. It also helped inspire an enormous body of biochemical research that has defined DNA as the informational molecule, a discontinuity that has been labeled the Biological Revolution of the 20th Century. As a piece of structural analysis, the idea of the double helix includes the concepts (1) that DNA is a duplex structure, comprising two paired complementary strands, associated by secondary, noncovalent bonds; (2) that the strand pairs are coiled, forming a double helix; and (3) that these are antiparallel—the orientation of one strand being in the opposite polarity from the other.

The most novel features of DNA are associated with its duplicity, rather than its helicity. Linear polymers rarely . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From The Rockefeller University, New York, NY.

Footnotes
Dr Lederberg is a consultant for Affymax Technologies, which uses DNA combinatorics.

Reprint requests to The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave, New York, NY 10021-6399 (Dr Lederberg).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?