The First Life: Haunt For the First Replicator
Experimental evidence supporting the Watson and Crick model was published in a series of five articles in the same issue of Nature – caused an explosion in biochemistry and transformed the science. Of these, Franklin and Gosling's paper was the first publication of their own x-ray diffraction data and original analysis method that partially supported the Watson and Crick model; this issue also contained an article on DNA (a main family of polynucleotides in living cells) structure by Maurice Wilkins and two of his colleagues, whose analysis supported their double-helix molecular model of DNA. In 1962, after Franklin's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. From each gene's point of view, the 'background' genes are those with which it shares bodies in its journey down the generations. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) – which is known to occur in the chromosomes of all cells (whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds). Most forms of life including vertebrates, reptiles, Craniates or suckling pigs, chimps and dogs and crocodiles and bats and cockroaches and humans and worms and dandelions, carry the amazing complexity of the information within the some kind of replicator — molecules called DNA in each cell of their body, that a live reading of that code at a rate of one letter per second would take thirty-one years, even if reading continued day and night. Just as protein molecules are chains of amino acids, so DNA molecules are chains of nucleotides. Linking the two chains in the DNA, are pairs of nucleic acids (purines + pyrimidines). There are four types of nucleic acid, adenine "A", cytosine "C", guanine "G", and thiamine"T." An adenine (purine) on one chain is always matched with a thiamine (pyrimidine) on the other chain, and a guanine (purine) with a cytosine (pyrimidine). Thus DNA exhibits all the properties of genetic material, such as replication, mutation and recombination. Hence, it is called the molecule of life. We need DNA to create enzymes in the cell, but we need enzymes to unzip the DNA. Which came first, proteins or protein synthesis? If proteins are needed to make proteins, how did the whole thing get started? We need precision genetic experiments to know for sure.
DNA carries information but cannot put that information to use, or even copy itself without the help of RNA and protein.
Books:
- The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
- DNA: Promise and Peril
- The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA: The Secret of Life
- DNA Fingerprinting in Plants: Principles, Methods, and Applications
- From Genes to Genomes: Concepts and Applications of DNA Technology
- Insect Molecular Genetics: An Introduction to Principles and Applications
- Genetics For Dummies
- Genome: The Autobiography of a Species In 23 Chapters
- Hunting the Double Helix: How DNA is Solving Puzzles of the Past
- Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life
- Molecular Biotechnology: Principles and Applications of Recombinant DNA
- Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Genetics
- The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix
- The DNA Saga: 50 Years of the Double Helix
- The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
- The Path to the Double Helix: The Discovery of DNA
- The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
- Fundamentals of Forensic DNA Typing
- DNA Topology
- The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology
- The involvement of RNA in the synthesis of proteins (Nobel Lecture)
- Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
- The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
- Emery's Elements of Medical Genetics
- REGENESIS: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
- The Selfish Gene
- The Cartoon Guide to Genetics