There was a time, back in the early 1960s, when I was tempted to abandon physics for paleoanthropology — the study of early humans.
Articles with DNA
Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge • Smithsonian Institution (CC0)
Reconstruction of the Iceman as it was discovered • Photo by Thilo Parg (CC BY-SA 4.0)
DNA magic may reveal some of the Iceman’s secrets
Mystery surrounds the well-preserved 4,000-year-old body of a man found recently in an Alpine glacier. Who was he? Why had he climbed so high above the valley floor? How did he die?
Image by Thomas Wensing (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Believing in DNA
A [February 1990] issue of Science contained a photograph, made with an electron microscope, of a portion of DNA extracted from a single-celled organism called trypanosome.
A model of human DNA (Public Domain)
Answering the oldest question
“Who am I?” It is the oldest question in philosophy. Socrates asked it. Descartes asked it. Philosophers today are still asking it. And science may be on the verge of breakthroughs that will change forever the way we understand the question.
Model of a DNA molecule • Photo by CGP Grey (CC BY 2.0)
Designer genes — a joke no more
Ever since bioengineers learned how to tinker with DNA and turn out tailor-made living organisms we have been hearing jokes about “designer genes.”
The A, B, and Z DNA in cross-section, modeled on computer (Public Domain)
The shapes of life
In his autobiographical book The Double Helix, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, tells how he came to think of the helix as the fundamental structure for that molecule. “The idea (of the helix) was so simple,” he says, “that it had to be right.”