Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment another. These experiments helped pave the way for the discovery of the structure of DNA. In 1953, with the help of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallography, James Watson and Francis Crick proposed DNA is structured as a double helix. In the 1960s, one main DNA mystery scientists needed to figure out was the number of bases found in each code word, or codon, during transcription. Scientists knew there was a total of four bases (guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine). They also knew that were 20 known amino acids. George Gamow suggested that the genetic code was made of
Rosalind Franklin and DNA was a general consensus at the time that they were at the inside); and the other is that DNA exists in two forms, a crystalline (dry form) A-DNA and a hydrated (wet form) B-DNA. With her PhD student Raymond Gosling, she produced a series of X-ray images of DNA. The photograph (number 51, hence, popularised as Photo 51) of B-DNA taken in May 1952 was especially crucial. X-ray crystallography did not immediately show the precise helical structure. Franklin chose to work on A-DNA, while B-DNA was given to Maurice Wilkins. By the early 1953, Franklin was aware that both A