Chapter 26 Summary

Watson's idea of like pairs of bases turned out to be untenable, because he was using the wrong type of chemical structure for the bases. Though he had copied the structures out of a chemistry book, the textbook authors, Jerry Donohue told him, picked the structure arbitrarily. Watson went back to work, hoping to make his idea still possible with the new structures. However, it didn't work. After lunch, he didn't want to go back to work. When he did, though, he discovered that with the new chemical structures of the bases, he could construct two pairs of bases that were identical in shape. Additionally, the base pairs were the same as the sets of bases that appeared in the same quantity in Chargraff's work. Though Watson was still tentative and uncertain, Francis enthusiastically propounded that they had found the secret of life...