{"id":451,"date":"2020-03-13T12:06:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/?page_id=451"},"modified":"2024-06-18T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T10:09:44","slug":"gel-lab-blog-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/2020-anniversary-events\/gel-lab-blog-1\/","title":{"rendered":"GEL lab Blog (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Reflections from a female genetics PhD student 100 years after Rosalind Franklin\u2019s birth<\/strong> by Chloe Austerberry, GEL lab PhD student<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last year, as I was embarking on my PhD,\na friend lent me her dog-eared copy of Siddhartha Mukherjee\u2019s \u201cThe Gene: An\nIntimate History\u201d. Diverted from my work, I inhaled Mukherjee\u2019s book, gripped\nby his page-turning account of the history of genetics, the fierce competition\nin the scientific community and Rosalind Franklin, a researcher at the centre\nof it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my own work, I set out to understand\nthe contribution of genes and the environment to individual differences\nin cognition and educational outcomes. In particular,\nI\u2019ve been trying to figure out how children\u2019s genes might influence the\nenvironments that are shaping their cognitive development. As a student researching\nthe interplay between genes and the environment in relation to\nachievement, it\u2019s perhaps unsurprising that I would be intrigued by Franklin\u2019s\nstory \u2014 a talented female scientist placed in an environment deeply unfavourable\nto her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Returning\nto my PhD research, I began working on the Early Growth and Development Study, which\nis a US study tracking the development of 561 adopted children. I want to understand how children are both shaped by their environment\nand are responsible for shaping their environment. Studying adopted children is\nideal for this. As\nI did so, I read more about Franklin\u2019s resistance to her new environment\u2019s\nattempts to shape her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1951, Franklin was appointed to lead a research\ngroup at King\u2019s College London. She immediately clashed with her new colleague,\nMaurice Wilkins, who \u2014&nbsp;despite being the same level of seniority as\nFranklin \u2014&nbsp;assumed that she\u2019d been hired to be his assistant. A high\nachieving academic, already an expert in the field of diffraction research,\nFranklin had no intention of assisting Wilkins, a shy man who she was utterly\nunderwhelmed by and considered to be \u201cmiddle class\u201d and as \u201cmediocre\u201d and\n\u201cpositively repulsive\u201d as some of her other male contemporaries<a href=\"#_ftn1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a>. Franklin set out to produce X-ray photographs of DNA, and after months\nof attempts she produced a particularly perfect image, known as&nbsp;Photo 51.\nThe image turned out to be pivotal in the search for DNA\u2019s structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In January 1953, Wilkins \u2014&nbsp;who\nsubsequently confessed that he should\u2019ve asked her permission \u2014&nbsp;did\nsomething now widely considered unethical. He shared Photo 51 with a rival\nscientist, James Watson. Watson recalls the moment he set eyes on it \u2014&nbsp;\u201cmy\nmouth fell open and my pulse started to race.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\">[2]<\/a>\nHe\u2019d spent years trying to figure out the structure of DNA and had most\nrecently been working with his colleague Francis Crick on a triple helix model\nwithout success. Franklin\u2019s image made it immediately clear to Watson and Crick\nthat DNA had a double helix structure and they radically adapted their model in\nline with her image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watson had earlier attended and been\ngreatly influenced by a lecture delivered by Franklin on DNA, in which she had\ndescribed it as possibly being \u201ca big helix with several chains\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\">[3]<\/a>.\nAfter the lecture he had excitedly rushed back to Cambridge to begin work on a\nhelical model with Crick \u2014 but in his bestselling memoir, \u201cThe Double Helix\u201d, Watson\u2019s\nonly reflection on the lecture was that Franklin might have looked better if\nshe\u2019d removed her glasses and changed her hairstyle<a href=\"#_ftn4\">[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watson, Crick and Wilkins went on to\nwin the Nobel prize in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Franklin\nhad died four years earlier, at the age of 37 \u2014&nbsp;likely as a result of\nexposure to radiation while capturing her X-ray images \u2014 and was not included\nin the prize. It wasn\u2019t until decades later that her contribution became widely\nacknowledged, though never formally credited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The centenary of Franklin\u2019s birth\nprompts reflection on the development of genetics research and the seismic\nchanges that have occurred in the field over the past 100 years. Although the\nfocus has naturally been on the many discoveries which have revolutionised our\nunderstanding of the human body, it\u2019s noteworthy that the environment for women\nin academia has also changed over this period. Franklin captured photo 51 at a\ntime when the hiring of female staff in academia was extremely rare \u2014&nbsp;now no\nlonger the case \u2014&nbsp;and when male staff lunched in a large, comfortable\ndining room, whereas, female staff ate in the students\u2019 hall<a href=\"#_ftn5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a>. It\u2019s not\nsurprising then that Franklin was \u201cexceptionally lonely\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> in the man\u2019s world of the\nacademic community of the 1950s. Today, in the age of the #MeToo movement\nand a persistent gender pay gap, there is clearly room for continued progress.\nHowever, I feel lucky to be studying 100 years later than Franklin, at a time\nwhen we are better able to recognise the contribution that women have made to\nscience and acknowledge that their contributions haven\u2019t always been properly\ncredited.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> As\nexpressed in a letter of her\u2019s written in 1953<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> Watson J. The double helix. London:\nPhoenix; 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> Lecture Notes of Franklin. Headed\n&#8216;Colloquium November 1951&#8217;, cited in Sayre, 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> Watson J. The double helix. London:\nPhoenix; 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> Sayre A. Rosalind Franklin and DNA.\n[Bridgewater, NJ]: Distributed by Paw Prints\/Baker &amp; Taylor; 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"#_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflections from a female genetics PhD student 100 years after Rosalind Franklin\u2019s birth by Chloe Austerberry, GEL lab PhD student Last year, as I was embarking on my PhD, a friend lent me her dog-eared copy of Siddhartha Mukherjee\u2019s \u201cThe Gene: An Intimate History\u201d. Diverted from my work, I inhaled Mukherjee\u2019s book, gripped by his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":421,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-with-sidebar","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-451","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Reflections from a female genetics PhD student 100 years after Rosalind Franklin\u2019s birth by Chloe Austerberry, GEL lab PhD student Last year, as I was embarking on my PhD, a friend lent me her dog-eared copy of Siddhartha Mukherjee\u2019s \u201cThe Gene: An Intimate History\u201d. Diverted from my work, I inhaled Mukherjee\u2019s book, gripped by his&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/451\/revisions\/1126"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psyc.bbk.ac.uk\/gel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}