Each of these things — along with every other organism on Earth — contains the molecular instructions ... Beyond the ladder-like structure described above, another key characteristic of ...

The dot and cross diagram shows that a water molecule is made up of one oxygen ... so a triple bond forms between them. The structure of nitrogen is N≡N, showing that it has three shared pairs ...

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But James Watson and Francis Crick's claim was a valid one, for they had in fact discovered the structure of DNA, the chemical that encodes instructions for building and replicating almost all ...

The structure of a small molecule can also be shown as a three-dimensional ball and stick model. These models show how the atoms and bonds are arranged in space. The diagram shows a ball and stick ...

Scientists still needed to figure out this molecule's structure to be sure, and to understand how it worked. In 1948, Linus Pauling discovered that many proteins take the shape of an alpha helix ...

This article was originally published with the title “ The Three-Dimensional Structure of a Protein Molecule ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 205 No. 6 (December 1961), p. 96 doi:10.1038 ...

This article was originally published with the title “ The Three-Dimensional Structure of an Enzyme Molecule ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 215 No. 5 (November 1966), p. 78 doi:10.1038 ...