Another brick in the wall

The host of celebratory scientific events that are scheduled for 2003 illustrates just how many bricks have been added to Watson and Crick's 1953 foundation stone over the years.

James Watson was on hand to be honoured at the first of these events “50 Years On: From the Double Helix to Molecular Medicine” (1–5 February, Miami, USA). In the same month, Watson also attended the premier celebratory US meeting (“The Biology of DNA”, 26 February–2 March, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory).

The European scientific celebrations will be launched with “Nobel Day” at the World Life Sciences Forum (8 April, Lyons, France), which boasts no fewer than 11 Nobel prize winners, including Watson, and covers the entire breadth of the discovery's impact. Watson also finds time to attend a genome-focussed symposium (“From Double Helix to Human Sequence — and Beyond” 14–15 April, Bethesda, USA), a Royal Society discussion meeting (“Replicating and Reshaping DNA”, 23–24 April, The Royal Society, London, UK) and a conference held on the exact anniversary of the famous publication (“DNA: 50 years of the Double Helix”, 25 April, Cambridge, UK).

Following the frenzy of double-helix related activity in April, the programme of scientific events slows down, but continues for the rest of the year. The annual Cold Spring Harbor Symposium this year celebrates both the anniversary of the double helix and the impending completion of the human genome (“The Genome of Homo sapiens”, 27 May–3 June). The International Congress of Genetics — a flagship event for the community that is only held once every five years — also has a genomic flavour (“Genomes — The Linkage to Life”, 6–12 July, Melbourne, Australia).

Meetings in many other disciplines that genetics has had an impact on in the past 50 years will be hosting symposia or discussions for the anniversary; for example, the symposium on “Exploiting Genomes: Bases to Megabases in 50 years” at the Society of General Microbiology's meeting (8–9 September, Manchester, UK).

Biotechnology is another area that owes a debt to the double helix, and later in the year a symposium at UC Berkeley (10–11 October, San Francisco, USA) will explore its impact over the past 50 years (the ubiquitous Watson will be in attendance!).

So, it will be a busy year for geneticists world-wide, but, as I'm sure most attendees at these meetings will agree, while it must have been great for Watson and Crick to lay the foundation stone, it is also good to be a humble bricklayer on a construction as exciting as this one.