April 25 is an informal "DNA Day" holiday---the date in 1953 when Watson et al., Franklin and Gosling, and Wilkins et al. were published describing the structure of DNA. The Genomics Sections or the Hawai'i Department of Health hosted an event on campus and I, among others, gave a short presentation. I was asked to go over a couple of classes related to genetics in the UH Manoa Department of Biology and to mention a couple of research projects in the lab. A copy of my slides are uploaded here.

I purposely delayed making the slides available as they contained some unpublished data. I am trying to make all of my presentations freely available, but there is some tension in doing this right away when they contain unpublished data. However, Aki Laruson just presented his results at the recent Evolution conference in Austin, Texas; Michael Wallstrom has a paper under revision; and, Gert de Couet and I have a manuscript rapidly getting closer to submission so it felt right to post the slides at this point.

Speaking of the structure of DNA. I like to ask my students in class who made this image below, the first X-ray crystallography of the structure of DNA?

Was it:

A) James Watson

B) Francis Crick

C) Rosalind Franklin

D) Raymond Gosling

E) Maurice Wilkins

This is a fun question because so many people get it wrong. The story that Rosalind Franklin produced the image that Maurice Wilkins shared with Watson and Crick, and helped them determine the structure of DNA is well known. Most people select C) Rosalind Franklin. And, most people are aware that Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. However, practically no one is aware that Raymond Gosling is the one that actually first made images of DNA structures when he was a graduate student working in John Randall's lab. Later he was reassigned to work with Franklin and they produced the actual image (photograph 51) produced in 1952 that was shared with Watson. Notice the names written on the right side of the paper enclosing the film.

Some accounts give credit for this image to Franklin and some to Gosling. Since Gosling  was the one to develop how to crystallize and image DNA, before Franklin arrived, and Gosling was a graduate student working for Franklin, I am fairly certain (unless new contrary evidence comes along) that this was actually made by Gosling.

Further Reading