Adn James D. Watson

DNA
THE S E C R E T OF LIFE
J A M E S D. W A T S O N
WITH A N D R E W BERRY

A L F R E D A. K N O P F N E W YORK 2003

T H I S IS A B O R Z O I B O O K P U B L I S H E D BY A L F R E D A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2003 by DNA Show LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House,Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. www. aaknopf. com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Watson, James D., 1928DNA: the secret of life /James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry. p. cm. Includesbibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-375-41546-7 1. Genetics—Popular works. 2. DNA—Popular works. I. Berry, Andrew. II. Title. QH437W387 2003 576.5—dc21 2002190725 Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition

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NA: The Secret of Life was conceived over dinner in 1999. Under discussion was how best to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery thedouble helix. Publisher Neil Patterson joined one of us, James D. Watson, in dreaming up a multifaceted venture including this book, a television series, and additional more avowedly educational projects. Neil's presence was no accident: he published JDW's first book, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, in 1965, and ever since has lurked genielike behind JDW's writing projects. Doron Weber at theAlfred P. Sloan Foundation then secured seed money to ensure that the idea would turn into something more concrete. Andrew Berry was recruited in 2000 to hammer out a detailed outline for the TV series and has since become a regular commuter between his base in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and JDW's at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on the north coast of Long Island, close to New York City. From the start,our goal was to go beyond merely recounting the events of the past fifty years. DNA has moved from being an esoteric molecule only of interest to a handful of specialists to being the heart of a technology that is transforming many aspects of the way we all live. With that transformation has come a host of difficult questions about its impact—practical, social, and ethical. Taking the fiftiethanniversary as an opportunity to pause and take stock of where we are, we give an unabashedly personal view both of the history and of the issues. Moreover, it is JDW's personal view and is accordingly written in the first-person singular. The double helix was already ten years old when DNA was working its in utero magic on a fetal AB.
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We have tried to write for a generalaudience, intending that someone with zero biological knowledge should be able to understand the book's every word. Every technical term is explained when first introduced. Should you need to refresh your memory about a term when you come across one of its later appearances, you can refer to the index, where such words are printed in bold to make locating them easy; a number also in bold willtake you to the page on which the term is defined. We have inevitably skimped on many of the technical details and recommend that readers interested in learning more go to DNAi.org, the Web site of the multimedia companion project, DNA Interactive, aimed at high-schoolers and entry-level college students. Here you will find animations explaining basic processes and an extensive archive of interviewswith the scientists involved. In addition, the Further Reading section lists books relevant to each chapter. Where possible we have avoided the technical literature, but the titles listed nevertheless provide a more in-depth exploration of particular topics than we supply We thank the many people who contributed generously to this project in one way or another in the acknowledgments at the back...