Rosalind Franklin: Unsung Heroine in DNA Structure Discovery

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Recommended: James Watson and his contribution to DNA

DNA, it makes everyone special and unique. Throughout time, scientists have discovered many facts about DNA. One such discovery was the pairing of adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine, but what about the structure? Watson and Crick are acknowledged the most for discovering and contributing the most to the structure of DNA in eighteen months; but what about Franklin? Though Watson and Crick are known for discovering DNA’s structure, Rosalind Franklin contributed the most to finding the structure of DNA because she was the first to take pictures of DNA’s B form, discover phosphate on is on the outside of DNA, and debunk DNA is antiparallel.
First, Franklin took a picture of DNA’s B form. That photo was acquired through Franklin bundling super thin strands of DNA and zapping them with a super fine x-ray beam. Through the photo is showen a fuzzy cross which meant DNA had a double helix. The double helix was a major …show more content…

She discovered phosphates are on the outside of the DNA strands. The phosphates are on the outside so that the phosphate-phosphate interhelical bonds are disrupted by water. Also, the hydrophilic phosphates caused the molecule to soak up water and lengthen causing the wet DNA to produce a sharp diffraction picture that resembled the pattern of a x; further proving phosphates are on the outside. Through Franklin’s research, phosphates were discovered to be on the outside of DNA strands which allowed other information to be put in place; such as nitrogenous bases and sugar. It helped show that each nucleotide includes one nitrogenous base, attached to the 1’ carbon of the sugar, then the sugar is attached to 5’ of the phosphate. Franklin opened a passageway for Watson and Crick to further more their own discovery. In addition to finding phosphates are placed on the outside of DNA strands; Franklin also discovered DNA is

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