The double helix of the DNA molecule, shaped like a twisted ladder, graces the cover of DIY genetics tests and high school biology textbooks worldwide. First identified in 1953, the has taken on a ...

Guided by the work of Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953, a finding that gave rise to the modern field of molecular biology.

Here is the same section of DNA but from another cell. If you can imagine that DNA is a twisted ladder, then each rung of the ladder is a pair of joined molecules, or a base pair. With this section of ...

File photo: US biologist James Watson, who shared a Nobel prize for helping discover the double-helix shape of the DNA molecule, pictured in Berlin in October 2004. James Watson, whose co-discovery of ...