Were Watson and Crick Wrong?

British artist Mark Curtis believes that the current double-helical concept of DNA is completely wrong. While toying with blocks one day, he claims to have stumbled across a design that is structurally sounder, but still conforms to the known parameters of DNA. Does this mean that Drs. James Watson and Francis Crick were wrong?

Curtis's new molecule resembles a spiral staircase wrapped around a decagon (ten-sided figure). Each side of the decagon is made of two base pairs shaped like pentagons and stacked atop each other. In his model, adenine still bonds to thymine and guanine to cytosine. Curtis says that this design, rather than the traditional double helix with base pair "rungs," is more natural and beautiful.

Most scientists, however, do not believe in Curtis's model or ideas. For one thing, they say, his theory is not based on any scientific evidence and is, therefore, only an artist's conception. Science does support the original double helix theory, though, which Watson and Crick first put forth in 1953.

Surprisingly, one of the key supporters of Curtis's model is Maurice Wilkins who worked closely with Watson and Crick in the 1950s and shared their Nobel prize. Wilkins believes that the artist's design better conforms to nature, and that science should always be open to new ideas. He says that only from a narrow-minded standpoint does Curtis's model appear unreasonable.