
Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869, a century before Watson and Crick - JPLeRouzic
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32487691/
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radford-neal
The title of the linked article is "Before Watson and Crick in 1953 Came
Friedrich Miescher in 1869". This is technically correct, though misleading -
Miescher did in fact chronologically precede Watson and Crick.

The title of this HN post is "Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869, a
century before Watson and Crick". The difference turns this title into one
that is definitely false, since it clearly implies that Miescher did what
Watson and Crick did, long before they did it. That's not true.

Watson and Crick did not discover the existence of DNA. They discovered the
structure of DNA. The existence of DNA was already well known, and other
groups were also trying to discover its structure.

~~~
dekhn
The issue is mainly that in many people's minds, W&C "discovered DNA".

I studied DNA extensively in my PhD program and didn't even know about
Miescher until I read
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Growth_of_Biological_Thoug...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Growth_of_Biological_Thought)
and even then it's just sort of a little chapter at the end of the book.

~~~
godelski
The problem here is that the HN title is clickbaity and inaccurate where the
NIH title is correct. On HN we try to avoid this kind of thing and I'm betting
Dang will come in and change the title.

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pcrh
Watson and Crick did not get the noble prize for discovering the chemical
nature of DNA, nor for being the first to suggest it might be the material of
heredity, nor for identifying it as a double helix...

They got it for showing how DNA arranged as an anti-parallel two stranded
base-paired helix could be copied from generation to generation, thus showing
how it could be the material of heredity. Their original paper contains just
one drawing of such a helix, and no experimental data.

~~~
radford-neal
"...nor for identifying it as a double helix..."

I think you're wrong about this part. Maybe someone else had speculated that
it might be a double helix (I don't know), but to take such a speculation
seriously one has to work out the details, and see that they are compatible
with the X-ray crystallography data.

~~~
pcrh
Rosalind Franklin and Ray Gosling figured out it was a double helix. Pauling
was speculating it was a triple helix. They published their finding _in the
same edition_ of Nature as Watson and Crick published their model.

~~~
radford-neal
Watson and Crick's paper contains the sentence "The novel feature of the
structure is the manner in which the two chains are held together by the
purine and pyrimidine bases."

Perhaps this claim to novelty is incorrect - I certainly don't know enough
about the history to have an independent opinion - but I think one must take
the conventional view to be that Watson and Crick did indeed discover the
structure of DNA.

~~~
pcrh
The conventional view is unfortunately incorrect. They _proposed_ an (almost)
correct view of how the nucleotides were arranged into a helix. Their proposal
included the feature that each strand of the double helix was in fact a
"mirror image" of the other, thus could be divided and copied to yield two
identical copies for inheritance by two cells.

The actual atomic structure of DNA was not experimentally determined until
much later.

~~~
dekhn
I don't think they ever said that it was a true mirror image, just that it was
two antiparallel strands.

The original Watson and Crick model was almost perfecftly correct even without
the need for explicit 3D crystal structure, the major problem being that the
water content of the fiber used in the study was wrong, so they made a model
of A-DNA structure, rather than B-DNA structure. If you look down the axis of
the double helix in the W&C structure, there is significant free space in the
interior because of the way the bases have moved, where in B-DNA, the itnerior
is packed with tightly stacked bases.

[edit: I had forgotten that the original W&C paper says there are only two
H-bonds between G and C rather than 3, which is another detail of the
structure which was not completely correct.]

~~~
pcrh
The original W&C model did not postulate three H-bonds between G and C, but
two, which is one of the reasons why it is only "almost" correct.

~~~
dekhn
Good point, I updated my comment to reflect that. Here's a nice writeup:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/439539a](https://www.nature.com/articles/439539a)

~~~
pcrh
Thanks! That was interesting.

------
realradicalwash
Great article. A snippet from the conclusion that I found particularly
interesting: "History of science all too often highlights "superstar"
scientists who have illustrious careers, overcoming great obstacles and
resistance to new ideas, leading to a public vindication, sometimes followed
by a Nobel Prize. Miescher’s story is different. There was no immediate
recognition nor ultimate vindication in his case, yet his discovery proved
fundamental for the whole of modern biology. Excavating stories such as his
from the past, and incorporating them into the history of genetics, helps us
portray the process of science more realistically."

~~~
teorema
The problem is now the superstardom narrative has grown in importance in
academics, regardless of validity. It's not just something we project into the
past anymore, it's something that is needed to project into the future, to
survive at the most basic levels. Everyone is the next W&C (ignoring the
complexity of the truth around _that_ narrative), until they have tenure or
are pushed out altogether. In this way false narratives about the past become
impossible goals for the future, which leads to false claims in the present.

~~~
realradicalwash
being in academia myself, this hits home so hard :/ the field picks some
rockstars, which imv is to a good extent based on charisma, and then goes with
that.

one of 'our' rockstars has pushed a certain hypothesis for more than 10 years.
it is plausible on a conceptual level, but I have yet to see systematic,
large-scale evidence for it. it would not be entirely trivial, but also not
that hard to test.

here is what happened: that person has fallen from grace due to some
troublesome accusations. those accusations did not stick up in court btw. the
case was made public 2017, the court case was closed this year. still that
person's reputation is tarnished, so is their rockstar aura.

here comes the kicker: just this year, the first study comes out, presenting
results that that hypothesis does not hold up, certainly in some contexts. i
know for a fact that at least one more team has had similar results a few
years ago - but when they first presented the results informally, they felt
pressured to shelf the project.

~~~
teorema
I'm not sure how much my cynicism is just me or my immediate experiences over
the years, but I don't really trust the academic system anymore in terms of
credit or even as much in terms of validity. Or rather I do, but in some
abstract sense, in that if I see a meta-analysis with some mechanism of
dealing with publication bias (formal modeling of bias, or preregistration) I
might believe something, but I don't attach any credit to the body of work
beyond those who as a group in toto were involved in it.

Too much credit is given to trappings of progress or something of that sort;
conversely, people are punished too much for things that are irrelevant, and
both seem to be weighted capriciously.

I see similar viewpoints expressed repeatedly in various outlets, but little
seems to change.

------
mensetmanusman
Shows the importance of communication.

If you discover something, but only you know, and you never tell anyone, is it
really a discovery for society? (no)

We celebrate society-wide discoveries, because it’s impossible to keep track
of hidden discoveries. (e.g. Columbus, Edison, etc.)

