2023-04-26 09:39:00
Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in discovering the structure of DNA. She was a chemist and crystallographer skilled in the X-ray diffraction technique, which allows images of the structure of crystallized molecules to be obtained.
In the 1950s, Franklin worked in the laboratory at King’s College London under Maurice Wilkins. During this time, he produced a series of high-quality X-ray images of DNA fibers, the most famous being the so-called “Photograph 51”. This image showed a helical structure, suggesting that the DNA had a double helix shape..
Rosalind Franklin, the true discoverer of the shape of DNA
Photograph 51 was shared without Franklin’s knowledge or consent with James Watson and Francis Crick, who were also working on the problem of the structure of DNA at Cambridge University. The information obtained from the photograph helped them develop their famous double helix model of DNA, for which Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962.
However, new documents reveal that the story was not exactly like that.
PHOTOGRAPHY 51
On the 70th anniversary of the publication of the discovery, the journal Nature pays tribute to Rosalind Franklin with a study that reaffirms his contribution and equates it to that of Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and James Watson.
First, the authors of the new study, medical historian Nathaniel Comfort and zoologist Matthew Cobb, demystify the importance of Photograph 51. Until now, the story featured Franklin “sitting in front of the image for months, unable to understand its relevance, while Watson understood it immediately. However, the authors argue that Franklin did realize its importance, and even more so than previously thought.
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Comfort attributes the perception of Franklin as a technique without deep knowledge to ‘The Double Helix’, Watson’s book published in 1968. In this book, Watson describes Franklin, whom he hardly knew according to his Wilkins, who had a notorious dislike for her.
Furthermore, everyone involved in the story, including Watson, knew that a precise structure could not be deduced from a single image (as other structures could have generated the same X-ray diffraction patterns). The only thing the image revealed was that the DNA molecule probably had some kind of helical shape, something that at that time no one doubted.
According to the original letters and documents analyzed by Nathaniel Comfort and Matthew Cobb, what did happen was that Rosalind Franklin was the first of the four co-discoverers of the double helix to realize that DNA molecules contained “large helices with multiple chains and with the phosphates facing outwards”. She mentioned it at a seminar in November 1951 attended by James Watson.
As usual, Watson did not take notes and left out some important details when telling his colleague Crick. Together, they developed their first attempt at a DNA structure: an incorrect model of a triple helix (and with the phosphates inward) that they never published. After that failure, their supervisor forbade them from further DNA research during 1952.
In parallel, Rosalind Franklin continued to progress in her work. But in fact, It was doctoral student Raymond Gosling, under his supervision, who took the iconic Photograph 51 in May 1952.. Gosling and Franklin had perfected their technique until it was the sharpest X-ray image taken of DNA (in its elusive B form) at that time. However, by itself, this image had no merit other than its clarity and, possibly, having impressed James Watson.
WATSON AND CRICK DID NOT STEAL THE DATA
The story, so far, also told that Watson and Crick took advantage of Franklin, stealing the find from him. However, things don’t seem to have turned out that way either. In January 1953, Francis Crick was invited to a new Franklin and Gosling lecture at King’s College London, where they would present these data. According to a letter discovered by the authors of the new study, in the invitation it was assumed that Crick would already know the data through his supervisor, Max Perutz.
Franklin already suspected that Watson and Crick might be privy to his data. Nathaniel Comfort and Matthew Cobb now clarify that, for this reason, Watson and Crick cannot be said to have stolen Franklin’s information. Perutz had provided them with the data informally, as he had had access to a preliminary abstract prior to publication. However, they emphasize that “they should have asked Franklin for permission to use that data and also informed him about how they were using it.”
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Although Comfort admits that Franklin may have been patronized by Watson and Crick on the few occasions they did meet, he notes that “after 1953, when they met her independently of Wilkins, they were friendly, professional, even warm-hearted.” .
In fact, in one of the first public presentations of the double helix, made at the Royal Society Conversazione in June 1953, the authors of the three ‘Nature’ papers co-signed. At the time, the discovery of the structure of DNA was not perceived as a contest won by Watson and Crick, but rather as the product of a collaborative effort. That is to say, that if these documents had been discovered earlier, Franklin would not have been presented to this day as an “aggravated heroine”.
As for whether Franklin deserved to share the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the DNA double helix, the new Comfort and Cobb paper leaves no doubt that that was a manifest injustice.
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