What Is Life? can be viewed as a well-reasoned theoretical prediction of what biologists should have been looking for during their search for genetic material. Both James D. Watson, and Francis Crick, who jointly proposed the double helix structure of DNA based on X-ray diffraction experiments by Rosalind Franklin, credited Schrödinger's book with presenting an early theoretical description of how the storage of genetic information would work, and each independently acknowledged the book as a source of inspiration for their initial researches. The book is based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Institute at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943 and
Non-helical models of DNA structure The SBS structure was hypothetical, and was not based primarily upon physical evidence. It was created to provide a theoretical solution to the angular momentum problem in DNA replication, which Rodley believed to be otherwise unsolvable. The SBS structure is a modification of the original Watson-Crick structure where, instead of one fully right-handed helical twist every 10 base pairs, there is only a "half"-twist of 5 base pairs’ length, followed immediately by a half-twist in the "opposite" direction (that is, a left-handed half-twist, also of 5 base pairs’ length). This alternating pattern of right- and left-handed half-twists is repeated throughout