DNA

 This is the definitive documentary account of how the human race found the secret of life. It reveals how a gawky American biologist, with a strong interest in birds came to team up with a cocky, but brilliant physicist in Cambridge, England. Against all the odds, they decided to tackle the problem of the century and would succeed in doing so. Was DNA the key to life?Specifically, it was a race between two teams of young scientists working in Britain, as well as the esteemed chemist Linus Pauling, based in California. Already a Nobel laureate, Pauling may have been the favorite, but the discovery would ultimately be made by his British counterparts. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins were trying to identify the structure by studying X-ray diffractions of the DNA molecule. But Jim Watson and Francis Crick studied a little bit of everything including, to the consternation of some, the work of their competitors. A few have gone so far as to accuse Watson of stealing Franklin's X-ray work. In any case, Waston and Crick's inquisitive working style ultimately allowed them to determine the DNA structure first, in 1953 an achievement that led to their Nobel Prize in 1962. Franklin passed away in 1958 from cancer.A half-century ago, the two unknown scientists heralded the dawning of a new era in biology and human life as they entered an English pub! Jim Watson and Francis Crick were hardly exaggerating. Their achievements almost single handedly launched the new science of DNA. Interviews with renowned scientists and stunningly realized animations and reconstructions of experiments offer a glimpse of the molecular basis of life.Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.