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The Pathway to DNA: The Double Helix Model

00:00:11.00 Ron Vale: Hello, I'm Ron Vale and we're here talking today with Doctor James Watson.
00:00:15.00 Doctor Watson
00:00:16.00 is well known for developing the famous model of the DNA structure
00:00:20.00 and proposing a model for its replication. This is work done and published
00:00:24.00 in 1953 along with his colleague, Doctor Francis Crick.
00:00:29.00 Thank you very much for being with us here today.
00:00:32.00 I'd like to start off by asking you how you first got interested in science.
00:00:37.00 James Watson: Yeah I've given a book on bird migration when I was six years old.
00:00:41.00 So it's called Traveling with Birds
00:00:45.00 by the curator of birds for the Field Museum in Chicago,
00:00:49.00 the national history museum. So there was
00:00:52.00 you know, seem to be the big problem particularly since my
00:00:57.00 father was a sort of, had been since high school
00:01:01.00 the compulsive birdwatcher, you know
00:01:05.00 at least when the birds are migrating.
00:01:09.00 And so it just stood out as
00:01:14.00 something impossible and yet it happened.
Ron Vale: So tell me about your
00:01:19.00 experiences as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.
00:01:22.00 James Watson: University of Chicago was focused on great ideas.
00:01:27.00 But broad, not just
00:01:30.00 great scientific ideas. So
00:01:33.00 most of my
00:01:37.00 first three years, were, you know great books, great ideas.
00:01:42.00 And,
00:01:46.00 at Chicago, the important word was great.
00:01:50.00 You didn't want to learn ordinary things, you wanted to really learn important
00:01:57.00 things. So I think it was the emphasis in Chicago
00:02:02.00 that aimed for greatness.
00:02:06.00 Now, I didn't think I had a great mind
00:02:10.00 but I didn't want to do
00:02:13.00 something unimportant. Ron Vale: So I'm curious to know how did you first get interested in
00:02:18.00 genetics
00:02:19.00 James Watson: When I read Shrodinger's book "What is life" and
00:02:23.00 you know the question What is life, that's a big problem and
00:02:27.00 you know you don't have to be very bright to say "That's important."
00:02:30.00 And the answer wasn't obvious.
00:02:36.00 Shrodinger's book had posed the question, "How can you copy a genetic
00:02:41.00 molecule?"
00:02:45.00 And that was, you know, what was biological information
00:02:50.00 When I was a senior, I thought that, you know
00:02:56.00 I wanted to get a PhD in genetics. I didn't want
00:03:00.00 to study bird migration,
00:03:04.00 which was, you know, all it could be is descriptive and
00:03:08.00 not very. You know,
00:03:12.00 you had the phenomenon, but it was very unlikely you'd do anything that
00:03:17.00 would put you much further ahead.
00:03:20.00 So I was uh...Caltech was a
00:03:27.00 very famous school, much more famous than it is
00:03:30.00 today. You know
00:03:33.00 New* and Linus Pauling was there, Oppenheimer was there.
00:03:37.00 And uh, when
00:03:42.00 they decided to go for greatness as a school,
00:03:47.00 they focused on biology and genetics and brought from
00:03:52.00 Columbia University Thomas Hunt Morgan.
00:03:56.00 So I applied the Caltech but they turned me down and
00:04:00.00 when they looked at it I didn't have any chemistry in my background or you
00:04:05.00 know
00:04:06.00 no graduate level,
00:04:09.00 nothing to make you think I had any interest in this subject.
00:04:15.00 And but I was told to apply to Indiana
00:04:19.00 because
00:04:24.00 the great Drosophila geneticist
00:04:29.00 Hermann Muller had just joined its faculty.
00:04:33.00 And they accepted me because
00:04:37.00 you know, they didn't get that many applicants..
00:04:42.00 They wrote me, "If you wish to continue your study of birds, go elsewhere,"
00:04:47.00 because that's all the recommendations said.
00:04:50.00 You know they knew me as someone who
00:04:55.00 getting up on spring migration days,
00:05:00.00 going out and looking at birds. Ron Vale: So it sounds like you
00:05:03.00 no pun intended, migrated from bird migration which is a whole animal
00:05:07.00 to then microorganisms and genetics
00:05:11.00 and then began to get interested in
00:05:16.00 chemistry and structure and those elements of life.
00:05:20.00 James Watson: I decided to focus my PhD on DNA
00:05:25.00 during August of 1949.
00:05:29.00 I was at Caltech for that summer
00:05:33.00 and I think I read the literature, it just looked like the
00:05:37.00 action was gonna be with DNA and not with protein.
00:05:40.00 So it was
00:05:44.00 just reading the literature because if you asked anyone
00:05:49.00 most of them would venture an
00:05:55.00 opinion, they say well you know time will tell.
00:05:59.00 Instead of saying, you know it's gotta be DNA.
00:06:03.00 And in part because
00:06:08.00 the people I was with really
00:06:14.00 sorta
00:06:18.00 thought you know that you might get great biological truths through physics.
00:06:22.00 And that was just...no. You were going to get it through chemistry.
00:06:28.00 I had to go for chemistry as a
00:06:32.00 post-doc even though I wasn't trained in it.
00:06:35.00 But I was...
00:06:40.00 just thought it was totally impractical to sort of move to
00:06:43.00 structural chemistry before I learned biochemistry, so I thought well I will go to
00:06:50.00 Copenhagen
00:06:51.00 where Herman Kalckar says he's interested in
00:06:56.00 the biochemistry of DNA.
00:06:58.00 I got there and he was interested in nucleosides.
00:07:01.00 He had no interest whatsoever.
00:07:05.00 In a sense he had deceived me, but I don't think it was deliberate. He was just
00:07:11.00 deceiving himself
00:07:12.00 that he was aiming for the big picture whereas in fact
00:07:17.00 he was aiming
00:07:19.00 at a pretty ordinary levels.
00:07:24.00 Nucleosides are easier than nucleotides.
00:07:27.00 Kornberg won for nucleotides. And so..
00:07:33.00 But at that time I didn't know there was any regular crystalline DNA and so
00:07:38.00 once I saw that picture then I immediately knew I had to leave
00:07:44.00 where I was, and go to the place where the picture was.
00:07:48.00 The problem was the person who had the picture didn't want me.
00:07:53.00 And
00:07:57.00 We'd met and he was put off by my, you know
00:08:01.00 going to intense enthusiasm
00:08:05.00 within seemingly seconds.
00:08:11.00 So
00:08:17.00 the compromise is that I went
00:08:21.00 to Cambridge which was the great
00:08:24.00 English University and there I met Francis Crick
00:08:29.00 and..but that was just luck.
00:08:32.00 Ron Vale: So how did you make the transition from Copenhagen
00:08:35.00 to Cambridge. How did that actually work out? James Watson: Well I just moved there
00:08:39.00 and then wrote the people who had given me the fellowship,
00:08:44.00 you know I wanna go from this place, it makes intellectual sense.
00:08:47.00 And they wrote back I'm not qualified to
00:08:50.00 to go to Cambridge, I should go to Sweden, with a man named Kaspersen
00:08:56.00 whose work I knew was essentially boring and unimportant. So I had
00:09:01.00 no intention. And then my
00:09:04.00 backers, Delbruck
00:09:07.00 lobbied in my behalf and the compromise was I got
00:09:12.00 2/3 a year salary instead of a full salary.
00:09:15.00 Ron Vale: So if I understand it, you moved from Copenhagen
00:09:18.00 to Cambridge without a fellowship and without
00:09:21.00 a defined position just because... James Watson: Well the English said I could be there
00:09:27.00 and I was to be with John Kendrew and luckily he couldn't
00:09:31.00 crystallize his hemoglobin so there was nothing to do.
00:09:35.00 And then I discovered Francis Crick
00:09:40.00 who's a friend of Wilkins
00:09:43.00 and Francis was just bright enough to know that there was evidence saying that
00:09:47.00 DNA was going to be more important in the grand scheme of things
00:09:51.00 than proteins and that the big discovery was to find out how DNA worked.
00:09:58.00 So we established this probably
00:10:02.00 within an hour. Ron Vale: So tell me about that first conversation.
00:10:07.00 James Watson: Well I told him I wanted to find the structure of
00:10:13.00 DNA. And then to my...
00:10:17.00 ....he said he was a friend Wilkins.
00:10:21.00 In fact Wilkins had tried to hire
00:10:25.00 Crick to be with him but then Wilkins' boss had turned Crick down
00:10:29.00 as being a....I think he spotted that he
00:10:33.00 could be a troublemaker.
00:10:36.00 Frances was a troublemaker in the sense that if someone had a
00:10:41.00 bad idea Francis would say it.
00:10:43.00 So sloppy thinking and Francis was incompatible.
00:10:49.00 Ron Vale: You had a
00:10:52.00 conversation with Crick, was that at the
00:10:55.00 cafeteria? what was the scene? James Watson: No we were in the same room. Everyone was in the same room.
00:11:02.00 And then, very good luck, they got another room.
00:11:05.00 And...so Crick had such a loud voice, and most people couldn't
00:11:10.00 work with Crick in the room. And so
00:11:14.00 I was put in the same room with Crick. The two of us
00:11:19.00 had this, relatively speaking, big room. Just to avoid Crick.
00:11:24.00 But they knew Crick was bright,
00:11:29.00 but you know, he criticized the professor which didn't
00:11:34.00 help. And finally they said you know you're going to get your PhD and then
00:11:40.00 our life is going to become sane, we're going to get rid of you.
00:11:45.00 You know rather than putting up with this person
00:11:48.00 who was challenging them too much. Ron Vale: And after that one hour conversation
00:11:55.00 where you said this is what I'm interested in and...
00:11:58.00 James Watson: Yeah and so the next thing was
00:12:02.00 call Wilkins and have him come over and find out what...
00:12:07.00 where we stand on the facts. And then he came over we learned of this awful
00:12:12.00 situation that he had lost control of DNA to this
00:12:17.00 uh....
00:12:22.00 supposed crystallographer, Rosalind Franklin.
00:12:25.00 So, you know
00:12:28.00 she became the enemy, she was the enemy of Maurice,
00:12:32.00 Maruice was our friend, and so she was our enemy.
00:12:35.00 Ron Vale: I was wondering if I could ask you
00:12:38.00 just for your recollections of the summer
00:12:42.00 1954, so that was the year after
00:12:46.00 the famous papers came out.
00:12:49.00 You drove across country I believe
00:12:53.00 to Woods Hole and there are a lot of interesting people there at the time.
00:12:58.00 James Watson: It was a great summer. Ron Vale: Yea, so I was wondering what were people thinking about and talking about.
00:13:02.00 I mean Frank was in that course.
00:13:03.00 He was a student.
00:13:08.00 And, I think the main conversation was that the double helix was
00:13:13.00 right. Ron Vale: There was the structure, the replication, the
00:13:16.00 code. Who was in that group holding those
00:13:19.00 conversations with you? James Watson: Well,
00:13:23.00 Alberts and Georgie invited George Gamow there.
00:13:27.00 Gamow had sort of by himself gotten interested in the
00:13:34.00 structure of the code and published something which was
00:13:38.00 soon shown to be wrong.
00:13:43.00 And Francis Crick was in the States
00:13:46.00 and he was was.. there was a period with Gamow and Sydney Brenner and I would
00:13:53.00 sit at the end of the room and not say anything because I
00:13:56.00 didn't have much offer. And it was chiefly that Gamow's code was
00:14:01.00 was wrong, which it was. We had to
00:14:06.00 understand RNA before we can move on to the code.
00:14:12.00 And I had taken an X-ray photograph of
00:14:16.00 RNA months before we even had the DNA structure so
00:14:22.00 I guess at that time I
00:14:26.00 I was leading the world in knowing that RNA,
00:14:32.00 you know that the information was passed to RNA and
00:14:39.00 what was its structure. But
00:14:43.00 Alex saw that, and
00:14:47.00 he solved the RNA structure with me.
00:14:50.00 you know something with you ***
00:14:53.00 But you know we never got a good photo.
00:14:58.00 Ron Vale: It's a harder problem than DNA.
00:15:02.00 James Watson: Oh much harder problem. And so
00:15:05.00 eventually you know I just gave up. Ron Vale: Were there any early thoughts on how you
00:15:10.00 take a triplet code and make a
00:15:12.00 20 amino acid code in 1954?
00:15:17.00 James Watson: Francis was filled with ideas.
00:15:20.00 I just didn't see that I had any
00:15:26.00 likelihood of doing something he couldn't do or...
00:15:29.00 So I stayed away from it. So I think you know just...
00:15:36.00 It is a practical thing you have to..
00:15:40.00 You know, people were bound to ask what was
00:15:44.00 the role of Watson in finding the double helix. Well Francis knew and you know
00:15:49.00 eventually I think most people
00:15:52.00 agree that what I wrote on the double helix was honest and
00:15:56.00 right and we both were necessary
00:15:59.00 and you know we both did something. But, you know I was sort of a misfit
00:16:06.00 compared to, you know, Crick who
00:16:09.00 was debonair, you know, and I was always..
00:16:14.00 He was always the center of every room he was in whereas I was..
00:16:17.00 my inclination was to be in the corner,
00:16:21.00 just trying to figure out what was happening inside
00:16:25.00 and not trying to dominate
00:16:29.00 things. So know, right now I miss,
00:16:33.00 I haven't missed Francis in a long time, I didn't feel the need ever,
00:16:36.00 but now, I think all the time about cancer
00:16:43.00 and what it is and how we might cure it
00:16:46.00 and I just wish Francis were alive
00:16:49.00 because he would look at the data the way I'm looking at it and say that I'm right.
00:16:56.00 Most people look at the data and don't
00:17:00.00 have the courage to say something is right. They waffle.
00:17:04.00 Ron Vale: You know, just
00:17:07.00 thinking about science today, young people getting into science,
00:17:11.00 what are some pointsyou might offer...
00:17:16.00 James Watson: It's much hard to be different today I think
00:17:21.00 and survive. And uh
00:17:25.00 being like everyone else is
00:17:28.00 awful
00:17:31.00 I mean in a sense it means you never
00:17:38.00 do anything yourself unique.
00:17:42.00 I think, you know when you're young you
00:17:47.00 you like to believe you could hit a homerun.
00:17:52.00 Ron Vale: And that means taking some risks?
00:17:56.00 James Watson: Yes, you know,
00:17:59.00 you're not aiming to bunt, you know, you're
00:18:03.00 going big.
00:18:06.00 Ron Vale: And what are you most passionate about right now?
00:18:11.00 James Watson: Wanted to cure cancer since 1948
00:18:15.00 and I'm starting to determine I want to be part of it.
00:18:18.00 Because even at 85 you know, I want to
00:18:22.00 have a great goal. So you know I'm not satisfied with
00:18:27.00 you know talking to you or you know, this sort of thing,
00:18:32.00 I wouldn't, you know,
00:18:36.00 I could spend my whole time doing it but it wouldn’t, uh…
00:18:42.00 You know, I get obsessed by science... I'm obsessed.

This Talk
Speaker: James Watson
Audience:
  • General Public
  • Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
  • Student
  • Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
  • Researcher
  • Educators
Recorded: November 2013
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Talk Overview

In an interview with Ron Vale, Jim Watson tells us how his scientific interest moved from studying birds to DNA. He describes his journey to Cambridge, his collaboration with Francis Crick, the events leading to the elucidation of the double helix model for DNA, and his current passion of understanding cancer. His story illustrates why it is critical to identify and focus on important scientific problems.

Speaker Bio

James Watson

James Watson

In 1953, Watson, along with his friend and colleague Francis Crick, elucidated a model for the double-helical structure of DNA. Together with Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for Physiology in 1962 for this discovery. Watson has had a long association with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory first as Director… Continue Reading

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