Monthly Archives: April 2013

25 April 2013 Last updated at 11:43 ET

A memorial to DNA pioneer Francis Crick has been unveiled at his former college at the University of Cambridge.

Attending the ceremony at Gonville and Caius was Dr James Watson, the man who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize with Crick for revealing the structure of DNA.

The engraved stonework, which depicts the double-helix structure of DNA, was unveiled exactly 60 years after the pair's seminal paper was published.

Their discovery has been hailed as one of the greatest in scientific history.

Crick's and Watson's groundbreaking work was published in the journal Nature on 25 April 1953.

Before the structure of DNA was unscrambled no-one had a clear idea how genetic replication - one of the cornerstones of life - worked.

At the unveiling, in front of friends, colleagues and family, Dr Watson paid glowing tribute to his colleague, who died in 2004.

The 85-year-old American, who went on to direct the US arm of the Human Genome Project from 1988 to 1992, said: "Francis was the brightest person I ever interacted with.

"I met the great physicist [Richard] Feynman but I didn't understand what he was doing, so it didn't mean anything. Francis I could talk to.

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Memorial for DNA pioneer Crick

A growing body of research suggests that our ability to lose weight is shaped in large part by our genes.

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(CNN) -- Happy National DNA Day! April 25 marks the 60th anniversary of scientists' discovery of the double helix. It's also the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which set out to sequence the more than 3 billion letters in our genetic code.

Biologist James Watson and physicist Francis Crick realized our DNA molecules form a three-dimensional double helix in 1953. But DNA research dates back to the late 1860s, according to Nature Education.

Friedrich Miescher was the first to identify "nucleic acid" in our white blood cells; his 1869 finding was later named deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Others later defined the components that make up DNA molecules, identified RNA (ribonucleic acid, the other type of nucleic acid found in all cells along with DNA) and determined that although DNA differs in each species, it always maintains certain properties.

Those findings led to Watson and Crick's conclusion, which paved the way for decades of DNA discoveries.

Today we use DNA tests to tell us about all kinds of things -- from Justin Bieber's baby daddy status to the innocence of a man sitting on death row. But genetic scientists are doing more than trying to prove Bigfoot's existence.

Here are five cool things DNA testing can do:

Map your family tree

A $99 DNA test could give you thousands of new relatives (although if they're anything like ours, we're not sure why you'd want them). Sites such as Ancestry.com offer to compare your DNA to those they already have on record in hopes of connecting you to unknown branches of your family tree. Ancestry.com's test can also tell you your genetic ethnicity.

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5 cool things DNA testing can do

24 April 2013 Last updated at 17:55 By Jennifer Green and Dhruti Shah BBC Science

DNA is the molecule that contains and passes on our genetic information. The publication of its structure on the 25th of April 1953 was vital to understanding how it achieves this task with such startling efficiency.

In fact, it's hard to think of another molecule that performs so many intelligent functions so effortlessly. So what is it that makes DNA so smart?

For such a huge molecule, DNA is very stable so if it's kept in cold, dry and dark conditions, it can last for a very, very long time. This is why we have been able to extract and analyse DNA taken from species that have been extinct for thousands of years.

It's the double-stranded, double-helix structure of DNA that stops it falling apart.

DNA's structure is a bit like a twisted ladder. The twisted 'rails' are made of sugar-phosphate, which give DNA its shape and protect the information carrying 'rungs' inside. Each sugar-phosphate unit is joined to the next by a tough covalent bond, which needs a lot of energy to break.

In between the 'rails', weaker hydrogen bonds link the two halves of the rungs together. Individually each hydrogen bond is weak - but there are thousands of hydrogen bonds within a single DNA molecule, so the combined effect is an extremely powerful stabilising force.

It's this collective strength of DNA that has allowed biologists to study genes of ancient species like the woolly mammoth - extinct but preserved in the permafrost.

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This short animation explains everything else you need to know about DNA.

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DNA: the 'smartest' molecule in existence?

A growing body of research suggests that our ability to lose weight is shaped in large part by our genes.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Happy National DNA Day! April 25 marks the 60th anniversary of scientists' discovery of the double helix. It's also the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which set out to sequence the more than 3 billion letters in our genetic code.

Biologist James Watson and physicist Francis Crick realized our DNA molecules form a three-dimensional double helix in 1953. But DNA research dates back to the late 1860s, according to Nature Education.

Friedrich Miescher was the first to identify "nucleic acid" in our white blood cells; his 1869 finding was later named deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Others later defined the components that make up DNA molecules, identified RNA (ribonucleic acid, the other type of nucleic acid found in all cells along with DNA) and determined that although DNA differs in each species, it always maintains certain properties.

Those findings led to Watson and Crick's conclusion, which paved the way for decades of DNA discoveries.

Today we use DNA tests to tell us about all kinds of things -- from Justin Bieber's baby daddy status to the innocence of a man sitting on death row. But genetic scientists are doing more than trying to prove Bigfoot's existence.

Here are five cool things DNA testing can do:

Map your family tree

A $99 DNA test could give you thousands of new relatives (although if they're anything like ours, we're not sure why you'd want them). Sites such as Ancestry.com offer to compare your DNA to those they already have on record in hopes of connecting you to unknown branches of your family tree. Ancestry.com's test can also tell you your genetic ethnicity.

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5 cool things DNA can do