In the spirit of National Public Radio’s [i]Science Friday[/i], I have decided to post about great scientific advances, in no particular order, every Friday. These topics can vary widely. Please send me any suggestions. The advances can be in the following fields: Mathematics Physics Chemistry Biology And any sub-set of the above. For example, some milestone in computer science would fall under mathematics, and advances in medicine throughout history would fall under biology. Please send articles from reputable sources with suggestions. This week, I though I would start us out with a brief history of DNA, the molecule of life. For full details, you can [url=http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-dna-structure-and-function-watson-397]read this publication by Nature[/url]. In summary, the article explains how Francis Crick and James Watson were not the “discoverers” of DNA. In fact, DNA’s existence had been known a century before Watson and Crick’s work. Much of the chemical composition of the macromolecule had been identified thanks to the work of scientists such as Friedrich Miescher, Phoebus Levene, and Erwin Chargaff. Watson and Crick were the first scientists, however, to successfully model DNA’s spatial geometry, specifically the antiparallel double helix. DNA is not called the molecule of life for no reason. Its fairly universal structure across all organisms makes it easily one of the trademarks of life, but the immense diversity it produces by the sequence of its bases allows for the existence of organisms as “simple” as bacteria to complex as human beings. It encodes for all the proteins that allow organisms to metabolize sugars, plants to produce glucose from light, and even for humans to process alcoholic beverages. It interacts with the environment to change gene products, which can vary in results from an advantageous trait to a lethal mutation. A better understanding of this special molecule has spawned numerous fields of research that work to fight genetic disorders and better understand the process of human embryonic development. I hope this was informational. I look forward to these doing these every week. Once again, if you have any suggestions, do not hesitate to forward them.