• Question: How do we know the formation of dna?

    Asked by franciss to Ollie on 17 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ollie Russell

      Ollie Russell answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      This was discovered by Rosaline Franklin. She used a technique called X-Ray crystallography to essentailly take a picture of the molecule. Check out this link for more info on this technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_crystallography.

      She did this work for Watson and Crick, who are credited with the discovery of DNA. Without her images this would have been impossible. Unfortunately she is not very widely known which is a shame as she did the most important work in discovering DNA.

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