History of chemistry quantum mechanics were able to predict qualitatively some chemical features for biologically relevant molecules, they were, till the end of the 20th century, more a collection of rules, observations, and recipes than rigorous ab initio quantitative methods. This heuristic approach triumphed in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double helical structure of DNA by constructing models constrained by and informed by the knowledge of the chemistry of the constituent parts and the X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by Rosalind Franklin. This discovery lead to an explosion of research into the biochemistry of life. In the same year, the
Solenoid (DNA) Solenoid (DNA) The solenoid structure of chromatin is a model for the structure of the 30 nm fibre. It is a secondary chromatin structure which helps to package eukaryotic DNA into the nucleus. Chromatin was first discovered by Walther Flemming by using aniline dyes to stain it. In 1974, it was first proposed by Roger Kornberg that chromatin was based on a repeating unit of a histone octamer and around 200 base pairs of DNA. The solenoid model was first proposed by John Finch and Aaron Klug in 1976. They used electron microscopy images and X-ray diffraction patterns to determine