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Winding Road to DNA Jan Witkowski Lauds an Account of the Half-Obscured Scientists Whose Work Helped to Reveal the Double Helix

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Winding Road to DNA Jan Witkowski Lauds an Account of the Half-Obscured Scientists Whose Work Helped to Reveal the Double Helix COMMENT SPRING BOOKS GENETICS Winding road to DNA Jan Witkowski lauds an account of the half-obscured scientists whose work helped to reveal the double helix. ong before the double helix was by botanists Hugo de discovered in 1953, biochemists vied Vries, Carl Correns to determine the enigmatic nature of and Erich Tschermak. LDNA. As early as 1914, chemist Walter Jones Williams adds imme- wrote (in his monograph Nucleic Acids) that diacy to the tale of pea the macromolecules “constitute what is possi- plants and heredity bly the best understood field of Physiological by starting with an Chemistry”. Cytologists, geneticists and even encounter between physicists, however, also co-authored the Mendel and C. W. Eich- story of DNA. ling, whose story was Unravelling the In Unravelling the Double Helix, medical Double Helix: The new to me. A German historian Gareth Williams illuminates key Lost Heroes of DNA seller of exotic flow- research in the 85 years between the dis- GARETH WILLIAMS ers, he visited Mendel coveries of nuclein, as it was first known, Weidenfeld & Nicolson in Brünn, Austria, in and the double helix. He refreshes a familiar (2019) 1878, looking for new chronicle by ending there, rather than using varieties. He later pub- it as a stepping stone to the Human Genome lished a verbatim account of his conversa- Project, epigenetics or gene editing. More- tion with Mendel — the only one in existence over, he eschews the ‘mountain top’ approach (C. W. Eichling J. Hered. 33, 243–246; 1942). — featuring individuals synonymous with The contributions of cytology contin- major advances. Instead, he shines a light ued in the early twentieth century with the on lesser-known scientists struggling, as work of Walter Sutton. (Williams could also philosopher Bertrand Russell put it, to bring have mentioned Nettie Stevens and William into the world “some little bit of new wisdom”. Cannon.) They recognized that the distribu- Williams starts in 1868, the beginning of a tion of chromosomes during mitosis and mei- biochemistry golden age. Biologist Friedrich osis mirrored what was expected of Mendel’s Miescher, working with physiologist Felix hereditary ‘factors’, and showed that specific Hoppe-Seyler in Tübingen, Germany, was chromosomes were associated with sex. The then developing a technique for isolating cell fusion of genetics and cytology came in the nuclei from the white blood cells in pus. He 1910s, when Thomas Hunt Morgan and his extracted a strange, fluffy substance from the colleagues mapped the chromosomal loca- nuclei, dubbing it nuclein. Moving to Basel tions of fruit-fly mutations. in his native Switzerland, he determined its Physicists’ work in the field was at first chemical formula using nuclei from salmon theoretical. In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger sperm. A decade later, cytologist Walther published What Is Life?, which built on work Flemming was studying division in sala- by biophysicist Max Delbrück to suggest that mander cells by staining them with dyes; he genes were “aperiodic crystals”. This influ- revealed coloured threads that he called chro- enced physicists including Francis Crick and matin (chromosomes). In 1882, he showed Maurice Wilkins (see P. Ball Nature 560, 548– with great clarity their behaviour in the repli- 550; 2018 ). But physics really entered the fray cation processes of mitosis and meiosis. when X-ray crystallography was harnessed to Genetics enters the picture in 1900, when study biological macromolecules. abbot-scientist Gregor Mendel’s research on That field was tiny in the 1920s. William principles of inheritance was rediscovered Astbury, J. D. Bernal and Kathleen Lonsdale worked at the Royal Institution in London NEW IN Relativity: The Special and the General Theory — 100th Anniversary Edition PAPERBACK Albert Einstein, Hanoch Gutfreund & Jürgen Renn PRINCETON UNIV. PRESS (2019) First published in English in 1920, Albert Einstein’s popular introduction to his Highlights of this world-shaking theories reveals what he dubbed his “step-motherly” approach. season’s releases. This authoritative centenary edition is a fitting tribute to Einstein’s efforts to make his concepts accessible — in turn, helping to raise the profile of basic science and modern physics on a global scale. Insightful commentaries and excerpts from Einstein’s original manuscript of the book provide context. 308 | NATURE | VOL 568 | 18 APRIL 2019 ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2019 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. SPRING BOOKS COMMENT under physicist and Nobel laureate William to the intensely scrutinized narrative on the discovery “may turn out to be the greatest Henry Bragg, studying small mol ecules such double helix itself, he clarifies key issues. He development in the field of molecular genet- as tartaric acid. Moving to the University points out that the infamous conflict between ics in recent years”. And, on occasion, the of Leeds, UK, in 1928, Astbury probed the Wilkins and chemist Rosalind Franklin arose scope is too broad. The tragic figure of Nikolai structure of biological fibres such as hair. His from actions of John Randall, head of the Vavilov, the great Soviet plant geneticist of the colleague Florence Bell took the first X-ray biophysics unit at King’s College London. He early twentieth century who perished in the diffraction photographs of DNA, leading to implied to Franklin that she would take over Gulag, features prominently, but I am not sure the “pile of pennies” model (W. T. Astbury Wilkins’ work on DNA, yet gave Wilkins the how relevant his research is here. Yet pulling and F. O. Bell Nature 141, 747–748; 1938). impression she would be his assistant. Wilkins such figures into the limelight is partly what Her photos, plagued by technical limitations, conceded the DNA work to Franklin, and distinguishes Williams’s book from others. were fuzzy. But in 1951, Astbury’s lab pro- PhD student Raymond Gosling became her What of those others? Franklin Portugal duced a gem, by the rarely mentioned Elwyn assistant. It was Gosling who, under Franklin’s and Jack Cohen covered much the same Beighton. Using wet DNA fibres, he took supervision, took the iconic X-ray diffraction ground in the 1977 A Century of DNA, but images revealing the black-cross diffraction ‘Photograph 51’. Williams debunks the myth that now seems dated. James Schwartz’s In pattern characteristic of helical molecules. that Wilkins “stole” it; he clarifies how, before Pursuit of the Gene (2008) hardly touches They were never published, and Astbury did moving on to Birkbeck, University of London, on biochemistry, whereas Siddhartha not follow up on them; if he had, the story of Franklin gave her materials and data on DNA Mukherjee’s 2016 The Gene devotes little DNA might have been very different. to Gosling, to pass on to Wilkins to use as he space to the backstory of the double helix. Many other “lost heroes” emerge in Wil- wished. It was after this that Wilkins showed Isaac Newton wrote to natural philosopher liams’s telling. Martin Henry Dawson and Photograph 51 to James Watson, who, with Robert Hooke that he had seen further than James Lionel Alloway made important con- Crick, used it to uncover the double helix. others only by standing on the shoulders of tributions to Oswald Avery’s demonstration There are a few errors — inevitable in giants. Unravelling the Double Helix looks that DNA probably made up genes. H. F. W. a book of such scope. Williams writes, for beyond giants to the many researchers, now Taylor, C. J. Threlfall and Michael Creeth cru- instance, that biochemist Linus Pauling took half-forgotten, whose contributions paved the cially participated in J. Masson Gulland’s work a “surprisingly long time” to recognize that way for an icon of science. ■ showing that DNA solutions changed viscos- his proposed three-strand structure of DNA ity owing to the rupture of hydrogen bonds was wrong. In fact, at a meeting before the Jan Witkowski is the former director of between nucleotides. All is scrupulously publication of the true, two-strand structure the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor documented in more than 50 pages of notes. (J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick Nature 171, Laboratory, New York. Although there is little Williams can add 737–738; 1953), Pauling remarked that the e-mail: [email protected] PARTICLE PHYSICS A singing, dancing Universe Jon Butterworth enjoys a celebration of mathematics-led theoretical physics. athematics is an immensely The Universe discoveries, over-reliance on mathematical powerful tool for understanding Speaks in elegance as a guide and a general drift into the laws of the Universe. That was Numbers: How what physicist and writer Jim Baggott, in Mdemonstrated dramatically, for instance, Modern Maths Farewell to Reality (2013), called “fairy- Reveals Nature’s by the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, Deepest Secrets tale physics”, divorced from its empirical predicted in the 1960s. Yet an ongoing, GRAHAM FARMELO base. Notable critiques have come from often fervid debate over the direction of Faber & Faber (2019) theoretical physicists including Peter Woit, theoretical physics pivots on the relationship Lee Smolin and, more recently, Sabine between physics and maths — specifically, Hossenfelder (see A. Ananthaswamy Nature whether maths has become too dominant. 558, 186–187; 2018). Science writer Graham The worry — expressed by a number of monoculture too focused on a small clutch Farmelo clearly intends The Universe Speaks theorists and writers over several decades of concepts and approaches. Those include in Numbers as a riposte. — is that theoretical physics has become a string theory, overstated predictions of new Farmelo takes us on a tour through the Climate Change and the Health of Nations Economics for the Common Good Anthony J. McMichael OXFORD UNIV. PRESS (2019) Jean Tirole PRINCETON UNIV. PRESS (2019) In this posthumously published volume, French economist Jean Tirole’s deft study epidemiologist Anthony McMichael journeys (translated by Steven Rendell) questions his through the deep history of Earth’s changing discipline’s role in society.
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