NEW YORK: James Watson, the Nobel laureate co-credited with the discovery of DNA&rsquo;s double-helix structure, has died aged 97. The eminent American biologist died Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson went down as among the 20th century&rsquo;s most storied scientists for his 1953 discovery of the double helix, a breakthrough made with research partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their momentous work that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to insights including the genetic code and protein synthesis. That ushered in a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics, and genetics, like criminal DNA testing or genetically manipulated plants. Watson was just 25 when he joined in one of science&rsquo;s greatest discoveries. He later went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome. His 1968 memoir, The Double Helix, was a bestseller praised for its breezy writing about fierce competition in the name of scientific advancement. But on a personal level, Watson was known as at best cantankerous and frank, at worst mean. He routinely disparaged female scientists, including Rosalind Franklin, whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA offered the clue that made Watson and Crick&rsquo;s modeling possible. Franklin, who worked with Wilkins, did not receive the Nobel. She died in 1958, and the prestigious prize is neither shared by more than three people nor given posthumously. Watson faced few consequences for his behavior until 2007, when he told a newspaper he was &ldquo;inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa&rdquo; because &ldquo;all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours &mdash; whereas all the testing says not really.&rdquo; He apologized but was swiftly removed as his lab&rsquo;s chancellor, and his public image never recovered.&nbsp; &ldquo;Twisting ladder&rdquo;Born on April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 15 James Dewey Watson won a scholarship to the University of Chicago. He received a Ph.D. in zoology in 1950 from Indiana University Bloomington and embarked on an academic path that took him to European universities, including Cambridge, where he met Crick and began a historic partnership. Working with X-ray images obtained by Franklin and Wilkins, researchers at King&rsquo;s College in London, Watson and Crick started parsing out the double helix. Their first serious effort came up short. But their second attempt &mdash; an image of Franklin&rsquo;s proved key, and the duo had it without her knowledge &mdash; resulted in Watson and Crick presenting the double-helical configuration. The now-iconic depiction resembles a twisting ladder. Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself, answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics. Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal Nature in 1953 to great acclaim. Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what today is known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he transformed into a global hub of molecular biology research. From 1988 to 1992, Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes. He shared two sons, Rufus and Duncan, with his wife, Elizabeth. He received honorary degrees from dozens of universities, wrote many books, and was heavily decorated. Jeff Goldblum played him in a BBC-produced film about the double helix. On Friday, his former lab commended his &ldquo;extraordinary contributions.&rdquo; But the institution had ultimately severed ties with the scientist, including stripping him of his emeritus status &mdash; in a PBS documentary that aired in 2019, Watson once again made &ldquo;reprehensible&rdquo; remarks.

File Photo - Dr. James Watson poses with the original DNA model ahead of a press conference at the Science museum in London, May 20, 2005.

Americas

James Watson, the Nobel laureate co-credited with the discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, has died aged 97.

James D. Watson, Nobel laureate for DNA structure discovery, dies at 97

Reuters

STOCKHOLM: Scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for &quot;the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit&quot;, the award-giving body said on Tuesday. The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and includes a prize sum totaling 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) that is shared among the winners, if there are several, as is often the case.

Artificial Intelligence

 Scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret, and John Martinis have won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Clarke, Devoret and Martinis win 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

Paris: Scientists said Wednesday they have turned human skin cells into eggs and fertilised them with sperm in the lab for the first time , a breakthrough that is hoped to one day let infertile people have children. The technology is still years away from potentially becoming available to aspiring parents, the US-led team of scientists warned. But outside experts said the proof-of-concept research could eventually change the meaning of infertility, which affects one in six people worldwide. If successful, the technology called in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) would allow older women or women who lack eggs for other reasons to genetically reproduce, Paula Amato, the co-author of a new study announcing the achievement, told AFP. &quot;It also would allow same-sex couples to have a child genetically related to both partners,&quot; said Amato, a researcher at the Oregon Health &amp; Science University in the United States. Scientists have been making significant advances in this field in recent years, with Japanese researchers announcing in July they had created mice with two biological fathers. But the new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, marks a major advance by using DNA from humans, rather than mice. The scientists first removed the nucleus from normal skin cells and transferred them into a donor egg which had its nucleus removed. This technique, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, was used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996. However a problem still had to be overcome: skin cells have 46 chromosomes, but eggs have 23. The scientists managed to remove these extra chromosomes using a process they are calling &quot;mitomeiosis&quot;, which mimics how cells normally divide. They created 82 developing eggs called oocytes, which were then fertilised by sperm via in vitro fertilisation&nbsp;(IVF). After six days, less than nine percent of the embryos developed to the point that they could hypothetically be transferred to the uterus for a standard IVF process. However the embryos displayed a range of abnormalities, and the experiment was ended. While the nine-percent rate was low, the researchers noted that during natural reproduction only around a third of embryos make it to the IVF-ready &quot;blastocyst&quot; stage. Amato estimated the technology was at least a decade away from becoming widely available. &quot;The biggest hurdle is trying to achieve genetically normal eggs with the correct number and complement of chromosomes,&quot; she said. Breakthrough&nbsp;Ying Cheong, a reproductive medicine researcher at the UK&#39;s University of Southampton, hailed the &quot;exciting&quot; breakthrough. &quot;For the first time, scientists have shown that DNA from ordinary body cells can be placed into an egg, activated, and made to halve its chromosomes, mimicking the special steps that normally create eggs and sperm,&quot; she said. &quot;While this is still very early laboratory work, in the future it could transform how we understand infertility and miscarriage, and perhaps one day open the door to creating egg- or sperm-like cells for those who have no other options.&quot; Other researchers trying to create eggs in the lab are using a different technique. It involves reprogramming skin cells into what are called induced pluripotent stem cells -- which have the potential to develop into any cell in the body -- then turning those into eggs. &quot;It&#39;s too early to tell which method will be more successful,&quot; Amato said. &quot;Either way, we are still many years away.&quot; The researchers followed existing US ethical guidelines regulating the use of embryos, the study said.

Scientists said they have turned human skin cells into eggs and fertilised them with sperm in the lab for the first time

Articles tagged with "Scientists"

James D. Watson, Nobel laureate for DNA structure discovery, dies at 97

Clarke, Devoret and Martinis win 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

Human skin cells turned into fertilisable eggs for first time