From this she deduced the basic dimensions of DNA strands, and that the phosphates were on the outside of what was probably a helical structure. She presented her data at a lecture in King's College at which James Watson was in attendance. In his book The Double Helix , Watson admitted to not paying attention at Franklin's talk and not being able to fully describe the lecture and the results to Francis Crick.
Franklin did not know Watson and Crick as well as Wilkins did and never truly collaborated with them. Franklin left Cambridge in and went to the Birkbeck lab to work on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus.
She published a number of papers on the subject and she actually did a lot of the work while suffering from cancer. She died from cancer in The Nobel committee does not give posthumous prizes. If the DNA of one human cell is stretched out, it would be almost 6 feet long and contain over three billion base pairs. How does all this fit into the nucleus of one cell? Funded by The Josiah Macy, Jr. All rights reserved. Concept 19 The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder.
One gene makes one protein. A gene is made of DNA. Bacteria and viruses have DNA too. The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder. Franklin produced detailed X-ray diffraction images, which would become her hallmark. With the structure of TMV resolved, Franklin set out to study other plant viruses blighting important agricultural crops, including the potato, turnip, tomato and pea. Then, in , she pivoted again to begin studying the virus that causes polio, which is structurally similar to the turnip yellow mosaic virus.
At the time, polio was a feared communicable disease. It has since been mostly eradicated, although cases linger in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In , she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she died two years later at the age of just Her collaborators Aaron Klug and John Finch published the poliovirus structure the following year, dedicating the paper to her memory 4. Klug would go on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on elucidating the structure of viruses.
Franklin was an inveterate traveller on the global conference circuit and a collaborator with international partners. She was a global connector in the booming early days of research into virus structures: an expert in pathogenic viruses who had gained an international reputation and cared deeply about putting her research to use. Franklin, R. Nature , — PubMed Article Google Scholar. Nature , 71—72 A , — Google Scholar. Finch, J. Maddox, B. Download references.
News Feature 10 NOV Paul's in to enter Newnham College, one of two women's colleges at Cambridge University. Her father did not, as some accounts state, oppose her in this, though he might have preferred her to choose a more traditional course afterward. At Cambridge, Franklin majored in physical chemistry. Her undergraduate years were partly shaped by World War II; many instructors, especially in the sciences, had been pulled into war work.
In one letter Franklin noted, "Practically the whole of the Cavendish [Laboratory] have disappeared. Biochemistry was almost entirely run by Germans and may not survive. Franklin received her BA in , and was awarded a scholarship for a further year of research, and a research grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. She spent that year in the laboratory of R.
Norrish, a noted pioneer in photochemistry. In , with the war still on, she had to decide whether to be drafted for more traditional war work or pursue a PhD-oriented research job in a field relevant to wartime needs. For the next four years, Franklin worked to elucidate the micro-structures of various coals and carbons, and explain why some were more permeable by water, gases, or solvents and how heating and carbonization affected permeability.
In this original work, she found that the pores in coal have fine constrictions at the molecular level, which increase with heating, and vary according to the carbon content of the coal. These act as "molecular sieves," successively blocking penetration of substances according to molecular size. Franklin was the first to identify and measure these micro-structures, and this fundamental work made it possible to classify coals and predict their performance to a high degree of accuracy.
After the war, Franklin began searching for different work. At the "labo" she learned how to analyze carbons using x-ray crystallography also called x-ray diffraction analysis , becoming very proficient with the technique. Her work detailing the structures of graphitizing and non-graphitizing carbons helped form the basis for the development of carbon fibers and new heat-resistant materials, and earned her an international reputation among coal chemists.
She also enjoyed the collegial professional culture of the Laboratoire Central, and formed many lifelong friendships there. Though very happy in France, Franklin began seeking a position in England in Her friend Charles Coulson, a theoretical chemist, suggested she look into doing x-ray diffraction studies of large biological molecules. Randall had originally planned to have Franklin build up a crystallography section and work on analyzing proteins.
Wilkins had just begun doing x-ray diffraction work on some unusually good DNA samples. He expected that he and Franklin would work together, but Randall's communication to Franklin did not convey this; it said that only she and graduate student Raymond Gosling would do the DNA work.
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