Today is the anniversary of the major scientific discovery of DNA’s double helix structure, published in Nature by James Watson and Francis Crick in April 1953.The discovery – arguably one of the most important of the 20th century – answered a fundamental mystery about how living organisms pass genetic instructions from generation to generation, and eventually enabled later researchers to understand the genetic code.
DNA Day also marks the April 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project, an international scientific research project allowing us to read nature’s complete genetic blueprint for creating a human being.