Discovering the Structure of DNA
On February 21, 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) using unacknowledged photographs and research by their colleague Rosalind Franklin. They had considered many other candidates for the structure, including single and triple strand helices before deciphering the structure. Franklin’s x-ray crystallography (image below)
would provide the missing essential clue they needed to decipher the structure. They would publish a paper that same year describing their discovery, but the significance of the discovery was largely overlooked by the general public for over a year. Today it stands as one of the most remarkable milestones in the history of science.
The word deoxyribonucleic is a compound word formed around the main root word ribose, which arrived in English in 1892 via the German word Ribose which was itself borrowed from the English word of 1880 arabinose, a sugar derived from gum arabic. The word nucleic comes from the Latin word nucleus meaning a kernel around 1700, from the Latin diminutive nucula meaning a little nut. It did not take the meaning of a central characteristic or attribute until 1762. It wasn’t applied to cellular structures for another 70 years around 1862. The -oxy- root comes from the Ancient Greek word οξυς (oxys) meaning sharp or pointed (sharing the earlier common root word that gave the Latin word acer with the same meaning and ultimately the English word acid). The de- prefix is a Latin preposition meaning down from, off or away from, used mainly in English compound words as a privative, meaning that something lacks something.
