50 Years of DNA

JULIE CLAYTON has a PhD in cancer research and immunology, and did four years' postdoctoral research in Los Angeles and London before embarking on a career as a freelance science writer. She has worked as an assistant producer for the BBC on television documentaries and reports for Horizon and Tomorrow's World, on the medical biography series Pioneers and on natural history films, and has published widely with Nature, New Scientists and many other scientific journals and websites. - CARINA DENNIS in now a freelance science writer based in Australia, having previously worked in Washington DC as Senior Editor at Nature responsible for genetics and genomics, and in New York City at Nature Genetics. She has a D Phil from the University of Oxford and is co-editor with Richard Gallagher of The Human Genome, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2001.

Foreword - Remarks from Phil Campbell - Preface; J.Clayton & C.Dennis - PART I: HISTORY - On the Shoulders of Giants : The Quest to Solve DNA? - 1953 Revisited - What Happened Next: The Golden Years of Molecular Biology - PART II: THE PRESENT - Where AreThey Now? - Structural Biology: Still Going Strong - Genomes Galore - Window on Evolution 'Artificial Evolution': Maize, Wheat, Rice Domestication - PART III: THE FUTURE - DNA as a Tool in Disease Diagnosis and Therapy - DNA and Culture - The Genie's Out - PART IV: THE DOUBLE HELIX - 50 YEARS - The Eternal Molecule; C.Dennis &P.Campbell - PART V: FACSIMILE PAPERS FROM NATURE, 25 APRIL 1953 - A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (Nature 171, 737-738; 1953); J.D.Watson & F.H.C.Crick - Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids (Nature 171, 738-740; 1953); M.H.F.Wilkins, A.R.Stokes & H.R.Wilson - Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate (Nature 171, 740-741; 1953), R.E.Franklin & R.G.Gosling - HISTORICAL BACKGROUND - Quiet Debut for the Double Helix; R.Olby - Discovering Genes are Made of DNA; M.McCarty - DNA and the 'Wronged Heroine'; B.Maddox - PART VI: DNA IN MEDICINE AND SOCIETY - The Mosaic That is Our Genome; S.P??bo - Nature, Nurture and Human Disease; A.Chakravarti & P.Little - The Double Helix in Clinical Practice; J.I.Bell - The Mona Lisa of Modern Science; M.Kemp - PART VII: DNA: THE BIOLOGICAL MOLECULE - Portrait of a Molecule; P.Ball - Ten Years of Tension: Single-Molecule DNA Mechanics; C.Bustamante, - Z.Bryant & S.B.Smith - DNA in a Material World; N.C.Seeman - DNA Replication and Recombination; B.Alberts - DNA Damage and Repair; E.C.Freidberg - The Double Helix and Immunology; G.J.V.Nossal - The Digital Code of DNA; L.Hood & D.Galas - Controlling the Double Helix; G.Felsenfeld & M.Groudine