Life After the Helix How Jim Watson Saw the Structure of DNA Transform Biology
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book reviews Life after the helix How Jim Watson saw the structure of DNA transform biology. Watson and DNA: Making laboratory was active. a Scientific Revolution We would talk to the stu- by Victor K. McElheny dents and postdocs late Perseus/John Wiley: 2003. 400 pp. into the night. $27.50/£18.99 The students were all Walter Gilbert set different problems. OFFICE NEWS HARVARD They were not in com- Victor McElheny’s biography of Jim Watson petition with each other, captures the growth of molecular biology but did compete (and R. STAFFORD/HARVARD UNIV.ARCHIVES R. STAFFORD/HARVARD and the creation of two major institutions collaborate) with other that Watson has led: the Cold Spring Harbor laboratories around the Laboratory and the Human Genome Project. world working on the It is a vivid portrait of a man who is himself same problem. In a tra- an institution in our science. Covering ditional lab, questions Watson’s childhood in Chicago, the discov- of technique or principle often rise through ery of the structure of DNA with Francis a hierarchical structure to the boss. The Crick in Cambridge, UK, and his creation of boss then speaks to his friends, generally a major laboratory of molecular biology at the boss of another laboratory, the question Harvard, the book contains many insightful passes down a chain of command to the comments and quotations. It describes well actual experimenter, and the answer, prob- the development of Cold Spring Harbor Meeting of minds: Jim Watson and Walter Gilbert ably distorted by rumour, comes back over from a sleepy, minor research institution to (inset) ran a lab together at Harvard in the 1960s. the peaks.Watson always tried to cut through an active centre whose courses, books and this pattern, encouraging his students to meetings have driven the pace of scientific assistant professor, he invited me to join him make direct contact with the person in the research in modern biology. and Francois Gros to work on the messenger- other lab doing the experiment — thus The past half-century has truly been the RNA experiments.I was a student of theoret- avoiding the hierarchy — to get the answer. era of DNA, with the publication by Watson ical physics,but in the simpler state of science He believed that science is done best by and Crick of a model for its structure in then I could read six papers, follow Watson independent minds solving problems and 1953, the identification of the genetic code and Gros around for a day, and then join interacting directly with other scientists as in the 1960s, recombinant DNA and DNA in the experiments. We sought an unstable peers, equals in the passion to understand sequencing in the 1970s, biotechnology intermediate molecule that could carry the nature. The students published indepen- and the polymerase chain reaction in the information from DNA to the cytoplasmic dently. During the 1960s and early 1970s, 1980s, and the Human Genome Project in factories, the ribosomes, which synthesized Watson did not put his name on papers the 1990s. The vision that molecules could the proteins. The three of us did the experi- unless he had personally participated in the explain life, and that the most important ments together — one shaking a large flask of experiments. molecule was that which carries the genetic bacteria,one holding the stopwatch,and one It was a heroic age, in which the science information from parent to daughter cell, pouring in 20 mC of radioactive phosphate was done by a few people around the world. has transformed not just biology but also the to label the RNA for 20 seconds before Small, informal meetings in broken-down world around us. Every organism on Earth the litres of culture were poured over ice. gymnasiums characterized the phage-group is assembled by a set of instructions carried We worked day and night throughout the or the nucleic-acid Gordon research confer- as a linear string of information in a set of summer. We were seeking an elusive target, ences in the 1960s. Today, each of these fields DNA molecules, which have an unbroken which many people did not believe existed, has expanded: where there were 100 people, line of ancestor molecules going back to the and which we would often compare, when today there are up to 4,000.Each experiment first cells that arose upon the Earth. speaking to each other, to the search for that was done by students in the lab in the Watson has been blessed by founding this the neutrino.However,our experiments were 1960s has become an entirely separate field field, growing the science and shepherding ultimately successful (Nature 190,581;1961). of science,and there are now gigantic factor- the Human Genome Project in its early For the next decade, Watson and I ran a ies, armies of automatic machines, churning days. He is a brilliant, acerbic man, who was laboratory together at Harvard.Although he out data that cry out to be understood. amazingly successful not just in his science, did not have great experimental skills,he had Has our science lost its soul? Has molecu- but also in leadership and management an unusual insight for phrasing important lar biology, which sought basic answers to roles. Although he has a reputation of never questions and an intuition for the essential how life works in terms of the molecules that suffering fools and likes to shock, he could new element.We were both driven by a fasci- made life possible,begun to drown as the new accommodate himself as needed. McElheny nation with the new, the flood of discoveries systematics (simply the collection of data) describes how Watson “carefully bends down that characterized that period of molecular lists all of the different genomes, and now and unties his shoes and musses up his hair” biology. McElheny’s book describes this proteomes, solely because they are there? Is before going to see wealthy people who period vividly through the reminiscences of the world one of infinite complexity? might support Cold Spring Harbor. the students and postdocs involved. When One simplifying explanation is evolu- I met Watson at a party in Cambridge, we returned to the laboratory at night after tion: how the individual patterns arose over UK, in the autumn of 1955. We became dinner, Watson would look up at the lit history. But the contingent nature of evolu- friends and, in the spring of 1960, when we windows of our labs standing out against tion means that many of the final patterns in had both had gone to Harvard,Watson as an the darkened building, and exult that the organisms are accidental. However, we must NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature © 2003 Nature Publishing Group 315 book reviews understand the full details of our particular separate, rather heavy volumes, the material state if we are to have effective medicine. We is intellectually divided into three sections: see the biological exploration of all the genes the history and development of space sci- and the gene variants of the individual ence; stellar space physics and cosmology; human, the record of the ancestors, migra- and Solar System and Earth science.The first tions and kinships, as relevant to our ability section on the history of space science to cure, to prescribe drugs tailored to the contains so much fascinating material that individual,or to enhance function. it would (almost) be worth carrying around It seems to me that molecular biology is in your briefcase to read on the bus or the dead. DNA-based thinking has penetrated train, although the volumes are too heavy the whole of biology, and the separate field to qualify as light reading. The later essays no longer exists. Also gone is the attempt also make good reading, with most striking to answer broad fundamental questions — a nice balance between accessibility and how does DNA work? what controls a gene? technical detail. — by single individuals. However, in fractal The authors include pioneers such as fashion, new sciences appear in the details James van Allen, Cornelius de Jagera and as we continue to learn. Science is both an Donald Hunten, as well as more recent con- individual and a collective endeavour. Like tributors to the literature whose names are the artist, the creative individual finds new more familiar.I will single out the impressive discoveries — most often manifest at the contribution of Arturo Russo, who provides moments of breakthrough when an idea a delightful essay on the prehistory of space reveals a new field of knowledge — that science (and also an appendix, which I will Looking stars characterize its forefront. Watson was such mention later). I knew a little about Kepler’s an individual, and he has stimulated that interest in space travel, but was unaware in the face character in others. I of Lucian of Samosota’s space-based books Walter Gilbert is in the Department of Molecular Vera Historia and Icaro-Menippus,which Advances in telescope technology have and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, contain detailed descriptions of space travel opened up whole new worlds and provided Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. to the Moon.This essay describes many other glimpses of distant galaxies. The Hubble historical items that were also new to me. Space Telescope, in particular, has provided It is also fun to read William Hartmann’s many stunning images, including this essay on the status of planetary science at the snapshot of the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini — beginning of the space age — how much has so called because it resembles a face fringed An astronomical changed in the once almost stagnant field of by a fur parka.