It was 60 years ago today that Drs. Watson and Crick’s paper describing the model of the DNA was published in Nature. The double-helix structure was based on an X-ray diffraction image taken by Rosalind Franklin.
Did you know that lots of DNA drawings are actually backwards? The “normal” DNA is right-handed, or clockwise. If you see a DNA strand going counter-clockwise, it’s actually called Z-DNA. So next time you see a DNA strand, pay attention to the direction of the spiral. To many scientists, seeing the flipped DNA is like seeing a grammatical error.
Enjoy!