|
|
US biologist whose research on the molecular structure of DNA and the genetic code, in collaboration with Francis Crick, earned him a shared Nobel prize in 1962. Based on earlier works, they were able to show that DNA formed a double helix of two spiral strands held together by base pairs. Crick and Watson published their work on the proposed structure of DNA in 1953, and explained how genetic information could be coded. Watson was born in Chicago and studied there and at Indiana. He initially specialized in viruses but shifted to molecular biology and in 1951 he went to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, where he performed the work on DNA with Crick. In 1953 Watson returned to the USA. He became professor at Harvard 1961 and director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology 1968, and was head of the US government's Human Genome Project 1989-92. Crick and Watson envisaged DNA replication occurring by a parting of the two strands of the double helix, each organic base thus exposed linking with a nucleotide (from the free nucleotides within a cell) bearing the complementary base. Thus two complete DNA molecules would eventually be formed by this step-by-step linking of nucleotides, with each of the new DNA molecules comprising one strand from the original DNA and one new strand. |