Maurice Wilkins and his King's College London colleagues, including Raymond Gosling, turned the unit's X-ray equipment on fibres of DNA from around 1950, producing diffraction patterns that showed early signs of a regular, helical molecule ahead of Rosalind Franklin's sharper Photograph 51. A paper reporting this work by Wilkins, Alexander Stokes and Herbert Wilson appeared in the same 25 April 1953 issue of Nature as Watson and Crick's structure paper and Franklin and Gosling's, offering independent diffraction evidence for the double helix.
Facts
MethodSourced to the subject's own accountWilkins and colleagues at King's College London drew concentrated DNA solution into thin, hydrated threads with highly ordered molecular arrays, then recorded X-ray diffraction patterns from these threads. 2 Key FindingSourced to the subject's own accountThe diffraction patterns showed DNA had a regular, crystal-like helical structure, early evidence that genes themselves could crystallise and a structural clue that fed directly into the double helix model. 2 LocationSourced to the subject's own account Connections
Conducted By
Source Maurice Wilkins (Britannica)
Tests
Source Maurice Wilkins (Britannica)
Uses
Source Maurice Wilkins (Britannica)
Sources
1. Maurice Wilkins (Britannica)
2. Maurice Wilkins (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDNA research sectionQuote, DNA research section
We realised that if DNA was the gene material then we had just shown that genes could crystallize!
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