Genome Meets Epigenome
5 December 2025: Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Sadly, the last of these Nobel laureates, James D. Watson, died November 6, 2025 in East Northport, New York at the age of 97 (AACR Memoriam).
The seminal paper by Watson and Crick that subsequently enabled scientists to unravel the mechanisms of genetic inheritance and cellular protein synthesis, and ultimately the complete human genome (Venter et al., 2001) and (Lander et al., 2001) was simply entitled, Molecular structure of nucleic acids; structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid (Watson and Crick, 1953).
On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this seminal paper, Waterland and Jirtle (2003) provided the first evidence that the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) result from alterations in the epigenome - the genetic programs that tell the cells when, where and how to work. Importantly, our ground breaking Agouti Mouse Study was also featured on the streamed companion to the PBS episode entitled, The Secret of Life because it demonstrated, for first time, why "Genes don't code for everything!"
The autographs of Watson and Jirtle on the historical photo above visually attest to the fact that the genome and epigenome function in concert to bring life into being, and that both play critical roles in the genesis of human health and disease.
