BBC European Service

Date:
1962
Reference:
PP/CRI/H/3/7
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: BBC European Service. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    EUROPEAN SERVICE First Broadcast 22.1.62, English Service at 1Ö00 GMT THE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE NO.256 ' Cracking the Genetic Code ' Dur : Pre-rec: 16.1.62. 7i TBU 135549 by Dr. Francis'H.C. Crick, F.R.S. of the üepartment of Physics, Cavenëish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Why do people resemble their parents? In a broad way we already know the answer. We all start from the union of one sperm c ell with one egg cell, each of which carries about half the genetic information. Now there must be a lot of this information since we're very complicated objects. Not only do we have many different organs, such as eyes and ears and a liver, but each of these is made from special cells, in a very intricate way, and each cell is also in itself §&» Vtyfj 6c VK pUwc , complicated object.- So clearly there must be a very great deal of genetic information stored in both the egg and the sperm. And yet it's been known for a long time that a sperm is a very small object. Its head, which carries the genetic information, is no more than one hundredth of a millimetre across. The actual genetic matérial weighs only a few times a millionth of a millionth ©f a gram. However the information is recorded, it must be written on a very small scale if so much is to be got into such a very tiny space. The obvious conclusion is that the genetic information is likely to be written at the atomic level, in terms of atoms and small molecules, and indeed all the experimental work of the last ten years suggests that this is true. However, a general argument of this kind can only be suggestive. We shall need many more detailed facts if we're to know just exactly how the genetic message is stored, and how it's read. For some time we've had a good idea of the sort of way in which the message is stored. In most organisas it's written on long thin molecules known collectively as the family deoxyribonucleic acids, or ^ DNA. DNA is a polymer. That is to say, it has a regular 25 Lines : Cont'd..