Access

News and Views

Nature 452, 819-820 (17 April 2008) | doi:10.1038/452819a; Published online 16 April 2008

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Human genetics: Dr Watson's base pairs

Maynard V. Olson1

Top

The application of new technology to sequence the genome of an individual yields few biological insights. Nonetheless, the feat heralds an era of 'personal genomics' based on cheap sequencing.

This issue of Nature contains a paper that is, in a curious way, a sequel to one published 55 years ago — the description by James Watson and Francis Crick1 of the double-helical structure of DNA. At the information-carrying core of this beautiful structure, with its far-reaching implications for biology and medicine, are the base pairs that Watson discovered by fitting together cardboard cut-outs of the bases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine.

  1. Maynard V. Olson is in the Division of Medical Genetics, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington 98195-7720, USA.
    Email: mvo@u.washington.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Human genetics Dr Watson's base pairs

Nature News and Views (17 Apr 2008)