Biography of James Watson - DNA Discoverer (Dioxyribo Nucleic Acid)

He then received a scholarship to go to college to the University of Chicago, and in the summer of 1943 they did the experiment for four years of college. In 1947, he received his B.Sc. in the field of Zoology. His attention in childhood bird leads him to seriously learn about genetics. In 1950 he was awarded a Fellowship for graduate study Zoology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she earned her Ph.D. in the field of Zoology. While in Indiana, he was greatly influenced by the concept of genetics HJ Muller and TM Sonneborn, also SE Luria, an Italian-born microbiologist who worked as a staff at the Indiana Department of Bacteriology. Watson's thesis prepared under the guidance of Luria, research on the effects of X-rays on bacteriophage cleavage.


From September 1950 until September 1951 he spent his first postdoctoral year in Copenhagen as a Merck Fellow of the National Research Council. That year he spent with the biochemist Herman Kalckar, also a microbiologist Ole Maaløe. Once again he worked with bacterial viruses, attempting to study the DNA of the virus particles. During the spring of 1951, he went with Kalckar to the Zoological Station in Naples. There at the end of the Symposium in May. He met Maurice Wilkins and saw for the first time X-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA. It is very encouraging him to change the direction of his research on the chemical structure of nucleic acids and proteins. Step in to be possible when Luria, in early August 1951, in collaboration with John Kendrew help Watson conducted research at the Cavendish Laboratory, where she began working in early October 1951.

When meeting Crick, they found the desire to solve the structure of DNA similarities. Their first serious attempt made in late autumn 1951, with unsatisfactory results. Their second effort at the beginning of March 1953 more based on experimental evidence and better appreciation of literature nucleic acids, and it is written in the proposal of complementary double-helical configuration.

At the same time, he conducted experiments to investigate the structure of TMV (tobbacco Mozaic Virus), using the technique of X-rays diffracted. The goal was to see if the chemical sub-units previously disclosed by the elegant experiments Schramm, indeed form a regular spiral. This objective is achieved by the end of June 1952, while using a tube rotating anode X-ray that allows a convincing demonstration of the formation of a helical virus.