Book Assignment: The Double Helix

Instructor: Ivan Iñiguez

El Paso Community College Biology Department

SUMMER I 2014 SEMESTER

Student Name:______Due Date:______Grade: ______/100

This is a MANDATORY reading assignment designed to accompany the book “The Double Helix” written by James D. Watson, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA. This book can be found in most public libraries or can be purchased at our local bookstores or online.

“The Double Helix”

by James D. Watson

ISBN No. 0-451-62787-3

Please answer the following questions and indicate in which page(s) of the book you found the answer in order to receive full credit. This assignment is worth 100points.

  1. Give the name of the laboratory where James Watson worked in conjunction with Francis Crick. In what university is this laboratory located?
  1. Who is Sir Lawrence Bragg and what was he well-known for?
  1. Who is O.T. Avery? What did Avery’s experiments strongly suggest about genes?
  1. Where does Maurice Wilkins work at? What is his specialty?
  1. What is the name of the famous Cal Tech Professor who first suggested that the DNA molecule is an α-helix?
  1. Who is Bill Cochran? What specific subject did he teach at the Cavendish?
  1. What is the name of James Watson’s sister?
  1. Who is Rosalind Franklin and what was her field of expertise?
  1. According to Watson and Crick, who was the best English Crystallographer in Oxford?
  1. When it was first believed that Phosphate groups were found in the center of the DNA molecule, what type of ions were believed to be responsible for holding these phosphate bonds together? (It is a chemical element in the periodic table and it is not hydrogen)
  1. Who is R. G. Gosling?
  1. Briefly explain what was wrong with Watson and Crick’s first built DNA model (Hint: Rosy (Rosalind Franklin) brought it up to their attention quite aggressively).
  1. In the book it is mentioned that Watson worked with TMV. What is TMV? Why was the study of TMV important towards the study of DNA?
  1. Who offered to teach Watson how to set up the X-ray camera for photographing TMV?
  1. Who is Erwin Chargaff? What did he propose about the relative proportions of the 4 different nucleotides (ATCG)?
  1. Who are Cavalli-Sforza, Bill Hayes, and Joshua Lederberg? The 3 of them established the existence of what?
  1. Maurice Wilkins took on the learning of interference microscopy to accomplish what?
  1. Rosy and Maurice never got along well. She asked him to transfer her from Kings College to where?
  1. Rosalind Franklin had been working with 2 different DNA forms (the “A” form and the “B” form). Which of these 2 forms gave the best evidence that DNA had a helical form? Briefly explain why.
  1. Who wrote the little book The Biochemistry of Nucleic Acids? How did this book help Watson?
  1. How did Rosy (Rosalind Franklin) react when she found out that Watson and Crick had discovered the structure of DNA?
  1. According to James Watson, what were the reasons for Rosy’s difficulties with Maurice and Randall?
  1. Who are Seymor Cohen and Al Hershey? How did they support Watson and Crick’s DNA double helix model?
  1. In what year was the structure of DNA discovered?
  1. In what year did Rosalind Franklin die?

Author:

Ivan Iniguez, Assistant Professor in Biology

Chemistry/Geology Coordinator

EPCC Northwest Campus