On April 25, 1953, an article by James Watson and Francis Crick, The Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid, was published in the American journal Nature. The publication occupied a little more than a page, it had only one very simple drawing. Thus, 50 years ago, the model of the spatial structure of DNA was proposed for the first time.

Undoubtedly, the collapse of the structure of the DNA molecule caused a revolution in the natural sciences and led to a number of new discoveries, without which it is impossible to imagine not only modern science, but also modern life as a whole. The discovery of Watson and Crick was followed by an explosion of genetic research. Knowledge of the structure of DNA has helped to understand the process of DNA replication (doubling) and thus to establish how genetic information is transmitted from generation to generation. Subsequently, a genetic code was discovered that contained information about the primary structure of proteins - the main components of all cells. The solution to the device of the hereditary apparatus of the cell served as a point of reference in the development of a new science - molecular biology. The emergence of methods such as polymerase chain reaction, molecular cloning, sequencing would be inconceivable without knowledge of the structure of DNA.

Undoubtedly, this discovery gave an important impulse to the development of genetics, the culmination of which was the scientific program "Human genome". Watson became the lead partner in this project, where the Homo sapiens hereditary information was fully deciphered. Knowing the human genome in the future will uncover the cause of many diseases, create drugs for so-called gene therapy to correct "sick genes" or replace "damaged" genes with "healthy" genes.

Over the past 50 years, it has become clear that the work of Watson and Crick on studying the structure of DNA has changed all of biology and has proven to be the most important for medicine. It is difficult to name the field of natural sciences whose development has not been affected by their discovery. In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, specialist in X-ray analysis, received the Nobel Prize. It is perhaps the most significant event in the history of the natural sciences of the 20th century.

By the way, another important event this year is the birthday of one of the “fathers” of the double helix, James Watson, who is 75 years old. It's hard to believe that when the article was published even in Nature, which turned the world upside down, he was only 25 years old. Professor Watson now heads the Cold Spring Harbor Lab in New York.