Today’s Headline: Letter to 12-year-old Sells for $5.3 Million

On March 19, 1953 the scientist, Francis Crick, penned a letter to his son of 12 years, Michael.

In part, the letter reads as follows:

“My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully) called D.N.A. for short. . . . Our structure is very beautiful. . . . D.N.A. can be thought of roughly as a very big chain with flat bits sticking out. The flat bits are called the ‘bases.’ . . . In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life…”

Michael’s dad had discovered one of the basic building blocks of life, DNA — known today as deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short, which it isn’t, it is quite long, in beautifully extended double-helical rope-like strands, that turn and spin, forever and forever, or so it seems, in a fascinatingly enticing twirl of new beginnings and life began.

You know DNA by its more commonly heard compositional marker, the chromosome. Chromosomes are made up of DNA. Chromosomal DNA contains the codes for you, for all of you, for who you are — from the color of your eyes to the turn of your toes, the shape of your ears and the twitch of your nose, why you don’t like the beet but love to crunch a sweet treat, why you do mind the cold and tolerate so well the heat, and why Jennie the Jet runs faster but Linda the Leaper can jump higher and reach the finish line before her.

As Cole Porter wrote so well of your DNA and Ella Fitzgerald sang so well of you and your chromosomes:

I love the look of you, the lure of you
The sweet of you, and the pure of you
The eyes, the arms, and the mouth of you
The east, west, north, and the south of you
I’d love to gain complete control of you
Handle even the heart and soul of you
Love at least a small percent of me do
Because I love all of you

That’s the all of you, the what you are and where you started to be you, and that’s the DNA of you.

In 1953, Michael’s Dad and his buddy, James Watson, were the first to describe correctly the unique double-helix model of the DNA structure. And in 1957, Francis Crick announced “the central dogma of molecular biology,” which describes how that DNA gets turned into you.

DNA has your chromosomal codes. You body first replicates a slice of DNA so it can work with the copy. Next, your body transcribes that DNA copy onto a messenger molecule called a ribonucleic acid, RNA. The basic information on the messenger RNA is received by the manufacturing units in your body where it is translated and the specifications are used to fabricate a “you” protein to “your” DNA code. That is how you were made and how you repair and maintain the person you are. As one biochemist put it: “DNA makes RNA makes protein.” And, I’m sure, it does much, much more.

There you have why a letter to a 12-year-old boy with a simple sketch of a DNA double helix was seen by an anonymous bidder to be worth $5.3 million dollars.

You may want to save those old letters.

No telling what may be in there.

Maybe some old pictures,

Of some of the family,

Or even all of you,

Good Looking,

Grandpa Jim