Putting the pieces together

• Watson and Crick knew from Franklinís data that DNA was a helix

  • Franklinís data also showed about how wide and how tightly coiled the helix had to be.

• They also knew about nucleotides, how large they were, and what shapes they had. . .

• . . . and they knew about Chargaffís Rules (Chargaff himself visited their lab in 1952).

• Watson and Crick tried building models that would fit all of these criteria.

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