The Double Helix Structure: Story of the question mark

It conveys my view on why questions are so important. What the power of inquiry can do and the power it holds itself.

The question mark is one of the pillars of society. They challenge things, they reveal things and they provide us with knowledge, but every question mark comes with a story.

So lets go all the way back to the 1800’s. 1869 to be exact where DNA was first isolated but it was only untilabout 1878 that Albrecht Kossel stated that it was made up of 5 primary nucleon bases. But that wasn't the final page because in 1919 it was identified that DNA existed in a base, sugar and nucleation unit. So they had this thing called DNA. It was proven, but no one and I mean no one knew what it looked like. So the quest began. The question was put out in the open on a bases of first come first serve. Scientist itching to get answer the Question: What does DNA look like?

Its now 1953 and we have two men by the name of Francis Crick and James D. Watson. Many say they were an unlikely pair. One was an American botanist and the other was an English Physicist. However this “unlikely pair” is responsible for finding one of the greatest discoveries of the 20^th century. They were so happy that when they came upon their discovery, one of them ran to a coffee shop and shouted “We have solved the secret of life!” They discovered what DNA looked like. They discovered the Double Helix Structure.

The Double helix structure in its spiraling ladder form is a code. It’s a program that tells us what things are. It’s like a 10 000 piece puzzle: The Proteins represent the pieces and they only connect to the right pieces. The structure helped us understand how basic life is formed, and it contains information about your genes. But in 1953 Crick and Watson didn't realise the full impact their discovery would have on the world. It was only until the Human Genome project was finished in 2003 the world was in awe of the double helix structure.

You see the human genome project was commissioned to build that puzzle. They were told to find every possible code and sequence that the genome could possibly give. In 13 years they built a 3 billion piece puzzle. They found 3 billion different base pairs. It is because of this that they could understand how to treat cancer. If it was for the double helix structure the UCT scientist wouldn't have been able to engineer a vaccine for malaria in 2012. It is because of the structure you can now understand why your child has a speech deficiency or isn't capable of learning like other children. If those didn't ask the question ‘what does DNA look like?’ where would we honestly be today?

What I want you guys got to understand is that question mark prevails against things such as perseverance, determination or courage because without the questions there wouldn't be answers and without answers there just wouldn't be stuff and things just wouldn't happen.