Question

Long before the structure of DNA was solved, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger suggested that the three-dimensional arrangement in some polymer had to explain the two main properties of heredity: 1) the stability of life, such that traits were passed faithfully from generation to generation, and 2) the mutability of life, such that traits could change. How did Watson and Crick’s structure explain those two properties?

Answer 1

Watson and Crick's model explained mutability because bases pairs can suffer changes (mutations) during DNA replication. Moreover, this model also explained stability because DNA strands are held together by hydrogen bonds.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a double helix molecule composed of two long chains of four types of nucleotides, each containing one different nitrogenous base, i.e., Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine.

In Watson and Crick's model, both DNA strands are held together by hydrogen bonds between nitrogenous bases on opposite DNA strands, thereby providing stability to the DNA molecule.

In DNA, Guanine always pairs with Cytosine by three hydrogen bonds, while Adenine always pairs with Thymine by two hydrogen bonds.

Moreover, Watson and Crick suggested that mutations could occur as a consequence of a base occurring very infrequently in one of the less likely tautomeric forms during DNA replication, thereby also explaining the mutability of life.

Learn more in:

brainly.com/question/762661