Nobel Prize-Winning Geneticist to Speak at U of A

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James Watson

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — James Watson, who with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their discovery of the structure of DNA, will speak on “My Life with DNA” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 4, in the Arkansas Union ballroom. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Watson and Crick made the breakthrough discovery of the DNA double helix, an elegantly simple structure resembling a gently twisted ladder. This model became revolutionary in biology, leading to an understanding of how genetic traits are passed along to children as well as to modern recombinant DNA techniques. Scientists learned they could cut and paste sections of unrelated DNA together, producing genetic information from different species to create novel organisms such as genetically modified crops that are resistant to pesticides and bacteria that can 'manufacture’ human insulin.

Watson received a bachelor of science degree in 1947 from the University of Chicago and a doctoral degree from Indiana University in 1950. He spent two years at the California Institute of Technology before joining the Harvard faculty in 1955. He was appointed director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., in 1968, becoming its chancellor in 2004. Under his leadership, scientists unearthed the molecular basis for cancer and were the first to identify cancer genes.

In 1988, the National Institutes of Health appointed him head of the Human Genome Project, an ambitious effort to sequence the human genome in its entirety. With the human genome completed, scientists now plan to work on those of the rat, chimpanzee, dog, and chicken.

“We need to understand how these instruction books work. In particular, we need to find out how the now seemingly somewhat less than 25,000 human genes are used,” Watson has written. “Though many scientists at the beginning of the 20th century saw the need for vital forces outside the laws of physics and chemistry, virtually all biologists now believe that not only development but human behavior and personality as well as, say, recognizing a familiar face can all eventually be explained in terms of molecular interactions and cell function.”

Watson is the author of three widely used textbooks, “Molecular Biology of the Gene,” “Molecular Biology of the Cell” and “Recombinant DNA.” He is the recipient of 22 honorary degrees and is the winner of the Eli Lilly Award in Biochemistry, the John J. Carty Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.