ABSTRACT
This section gives a brief account of the discovery of the DNA double
helix [Watson (1968)]. It is a fascinating story by itself (a story of
amazing coincidences, questionable scientific ethics etc.), but here I
mainly refer to it since it helps us to appreciate what is so special
about DNA. So let us for now forget all that we know about DNA,
especially its structure and the fact that it is the carrier of the genetic
information. Back in the forties of the last century it was still not
clear what genes were about, but it was clear that there is genetic
information that can be passed on to the next generation. DNA was
then certainly not the primary suspect for carrying this information
since it seemed then to be just a dullmolecule that showed no special
activities and thus might have just some structural function. On the
other hand, proteins were known to represent a very rich class of
extremely diverse molecules. Therefore it seemed to be logical that
the composition of proteins, or a subset thereof, somehow encodes
for the genetic information.
