Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Thirty years of structural changes

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 31, pages 4–5 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

The concluding statement of Watson and Crick’s historic paper on the structure of DNA1 enshrines a key tenet of molecular mechanistic cell biology: “… the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material”. Function — heredity in this case — is embedded in the redundant sequence information of the two strands of DNA. Although not always expressed as blatantly, the intimate dependence of cellular function on the mechanical level of macromolecules is inspirational. The devil is in the structural detail, and the painstaking quest for the correct details and their returns in the form of reliable knowledge knows no shortcuts.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Watson, J. D. & Crick, F. H. Nature 171, 737–738 (1953).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Jumper, J. et al. Nature 596, 583–589 (2021).

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Musacchio, A., Saraste, M. & Wilmanns, M. Nat. Struct. Biol. 1, 546–551 (1994).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Cramer, P. et al. Science 288, 640–649 (2000).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Ban, N., Nissen, P., Hansen, J., Moore, P. B. & Steitz, T. A. Science 289, 905–920 (2000).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Wimberly, B. T. et al. Nature 407, 327–339 (2000).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Yeeles, J. T., Deegan, T. D., Janska, A., Early, A. & Diffley, J. F. Nature 519, 431–435 (2015).

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Musacchio, A. EMBO J. 41, e109952 (2022).

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author is supported by the Max Planck Society, and by grants from the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant 951430 (BIOMECANET), the DFG’s Collaborative Research Centre ‘Molecular Mechanisms of Cell State Transitions’ (CRC 1430, project ID 424228829) and the CANTAR network under the Netzwerke-NRW program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanistic Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany

    Andrea Musacchio

  2. Max Planck School Matter to Life, Heidelberg, Germany

    Andrea Musacchio

  3. Centre for Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Andrea Musacchio

Authors
  1. Andrea Musacchio
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Musacchio.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Musacchio, A. Thirty years of structural changes. Nat Struct Mol Biol 31, 4–5 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01193-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-023-01193-3

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing