During the 1950s Crick made crucial contributions not only to the study of DNA and the genetic code, but to X-ray structure analysis of important biological molecules. He was instrumental in extending helical diffraction theory to construct three-dimensional maps of protein molecules from X-ray data. In particular, he calculated the complicated X-ray diffraction pattern produced by a helix that was itself wound around a second axis into a larger super helix, or coiled coil. In this paper, Crick and Alexander Rich, a visiting physical chemist in the Cavendish laboratory who had studied the structure of RNA with James Watson at the California Institute of Technology, applied helical diffraction theory to deduce the three-chain, coiled coil structure of collagen, a family of extracellular proteins that are a major component of connective tissue and make up one-third of all proteins in the human body. The discovery of the three-dimensional structure of a protein was an important event in molecular biology during the 1950s.
Item is a photocopy.
Number of Image Pages:
2 (238,946 Bytes)
Date:
1955-11-12 (November 12, 1955)
Creator:
Rich, Alexander
Crick, Francis
Source:
Periodical: Rich, Alexander, and Francis Crick. "The Structure of Collagen." Nature 176, 4489 (12 November 1955): 915-916. Article. 2 Images.
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Rights:
Reproduced with permission of the Nature Publishing Group.
