Heredity is the process where genetic information is passed from parents to offspring. DNA, found in the nuclei of cells and organised into chromosomes, is the substance that carries this information.
Genetic information is passed from one generation to the next. This is called heredity and why we resemble our parents. The genetic information itself is contained in a complex molecule called DNA .
Scientists worked out the structure of DNA in the 1950s. Rosalind Franklin made ‘X-ray diffraction’ images of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick used information from one of her images to work out a model for the structure of DNA. Work by Maurice Wilkins, a colleague of Franklin, supported their model.
Watson and Crick were able to work out how DNA was arranged and the tiny distances between its different features. They worked out that in a DNA molecule:
Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery. Franklin had died before then and so could not be awarded it with them.