DNA discovery, structure, and replication
In this activity, we learned how DNA was discovered, and it was in a strange fashion.  There were two people who became famous for discovering DNA, and they were Watson and Crick.  However, a man named Wilkins showed them the picture, but from where did he obtain the picture?  The first picture taken of DNA was courtesy of a woman named Franklin.  Even though she took the picture, she received no credit, and many believed it do be from a sexist point of view and people didn't want to award a woman.  To show how DNA is configured, we constructed our very own DNA model with candy! We used licorice as the sugar and phosphorous part of the model, which is where the DNA twists, and gummy bears and chewy jolly ranchers to represent A=T and C=G.  One combination of a bond included a green jolly rancher bonded--which was represented by toothpicks--with a red gummy bear, while the other bond included an orange gummy bear and a red jolly rancher.  Once the class put together one DNA model, our next objective turned out to be splitting our original model in half and matching the corresponding gummy bear or jolly rancher with the other jolly rancher or gummy bear.  What was unique about the DNA structures replicating?  Both models were identical, which means when DNA replicates, it creates another DNA strand exactly like the original.





This is the original DNA structure.







This is (sloppy) what the duplicated DNA resembled.