Celebrating 50 Years Since the Discovery of the Double Helix

In 1963, I had just graduated from the University of Colorado
and drove across the country to grab a student charter flight to
London. While my college pals went to climb mountains on the Isle
of Skye, I made a scientific pilgrimage to Cambridge ““ the
discovery of the DNA structure was so profound and exciting, that I
had to see the actual place where it occurred.

It was a scientific pilgrimage made by hitchhiking. After
catching a ride on a lorry out of London, my second ride appeared:
a little red MG convertible heading toward Cambridge.

I started talking with the driver, who was my age, and asked his
name. He said Michael Crick.

I paused a second or two, and asked him, “are you any
relation to Francis Crick?”

He said “Yes, I’m his son.”

This was months before the Nobel Prize was awarded.

I asked Michael if he would mind taking me out to see the new
Medical Research Council lab on the south side of Cambridge. He was
going that way, and that was my first glimpse of the historic lab.
The real lab, where DNA had been solved, was actually cramped
quarters back in central Cambridge!

But I didn’t know that at the time.

I stood and saw a small building surrounded by farmland. This
was my introduction to Cambridge, to Watson and Crick, and to
DNA.

Over the years, I have maintained that connection and affection
for Cambridge.

This year on April 25, the 50th anniversary of the publication
of the Double Helix structure, I’ll be part of a contingent
of UCLA faculty who share a common bond of having worked or studied
at the MRC in Cambridge, and have been invited to return to that
lab that started as a single small building and is now a huge
campus and hospital complex.

We will join with other scientific friends from around world to
celebrate with James Watson and, in absentia, Francis Crick.

This celebration is reminiscent of an earlier Cambridge
scientific fest, the 50th anniversary of Darwin’s publication
of the Origin of the Species, in 1909.

Just as Darwin’s discovery was the most important
biological discovery of the 19th Century, so Watson and
Crick’s discovery is considered to be the most significant
biological discovery in the 20th Century.

An interesting difference between the two is that the DNA
celebration is truly an international gathering, and that today
both Watson and Crick live in the United States.

Crick, who finds traveling difficult at his age, will have a
private celebration in La Jolla with expatriate friends from
Cambridge who also live in the city.

One of them, Sidney Brenner, just won the Nobel Prize.

The celebrations will almost be a moveable feast, starting at
the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Watson will then fly to
the Royal Society in London for two days of special lectures. The
party will culminate in Cambridge on the 25th, the exact day of the
publication of the double helix structure.

The events are by invitation only, and will include among many
things, the unveiling of a plaque in the “Eagle” Pub in
Cambridge, where Watson and Crick discussed their work over lunch
and a pint of beer.

To many, the double helix was the spark that ignited a torrent
of fundamental discoveries in molecular biology because it shifted
the scientific focus to genes.

Genes are important because they contain the instructions for
building and controlling proteins, which do most of the work of the
cell.

Once we learned the information in genes used just the four
letters of the DNA alphabet, scientific attention shifted to
understanding how this alphabet contained the information to build
proteins.

Just 15 years after the discovery of DNA, the scientific
community had deciphered the genetic code and thereby understood a
major part of the secrets of DNA.

The contributions of Jim Watson and Francis Crick extend beyond
solving the structure of DNA.

Francis Crick, in fact, was a major participant in recognizing
the importance of the protein coding problem and he and Sydney
Brenner made critical discoveries that led to its solution.

Likewise, James Watson has had an enormous influence in the
scientific world. Solving the structure of DNA would have been the
pinnacle of most careers, but Watson went on to make three
additional important contributions.

He wrote a critically-acclaimed best selling book, the Double
Helix, which showed the human side of modern biology, complete with
competition and rivalries.

Watson also took over the directorship of a sleepy marine
laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Labs on Long Island, and turned it
into a world class scientific center.

He also foresaw the importance of sequencing the human genome,
and despite powerful scientific and political opposition, made the
human genome project a reality that was completed two years
ago.

As a result, for the first time, we have the complete sequence
of DNA, the molecule that determines whether we are humans or
monkeys.

James Lake is a professor of molecular biology in MCD biology
and human genetics.