science & genetics
For many years it had been thought that just four chemicals were too few to express the complexity of living things and that genes probably resided within more complex structures in cell nuclei such as proteins. It was their revelation that the nucleotides formed enormously long combinations (meters long) within the chromosomes of cells and capable of governing cell function that heralded the race to map the entire human genome, which was finally achieved in 2001.
Crick and Watson’s discovery was called the Rosetta Stone of genetics – suddenly the secrets of people’s genetic origins and genetic predispositions were within reach. And now such seeming absolutes as a person’s colour and race were highly problematic – revealed to be entirely superficial phenotypes (outward traits) given that at a genetic level human beings are more or less identical to one another.
