Francis Crick
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRSwas a British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, most noted for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 with James Watson. Together with Watson and Maurice Wilkins, he was jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 June 1916
Francis Crick quotes about
acid groups backbone
How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons.
minorities may acid
The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.
determination acid would-be
Unfortunately it makes the unambiguous determination of triplets by these methods much more difficult than would be the case if there were only one triplet for each amino acid.
agreement acid mutation
A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement.
four acid twenties
It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature.
molecules acid determined
It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule.
together maps acid
This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map.
may acid triplet
It now seems very likely that many of the 64 triplets, possibly most of them, may code one amino acid or another, and that in general several distinct triplets may code one amino acid.
act certain chain english-scientist messenger secondary seems since single virtually
It seems virtually certain that a single chain of RNA can act as messenger RNA, since poly U is a single chain without secondary structure.
assuming certain code deduce english-scientist information limited using
By using polymers of different composition and assuming a triplet code one can deduce limited information about the composition of certain triplets.
simplicity tools use
While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.
thinking arrogance ruthlessness
Jim and I hit it off immediately, partly because our interests were astonishingly similar and partly, I suspect, because a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, an impatience with sloppy thinking can naturally to both of us.
thinking class simplicity
For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.
double-standard combination form
If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive.