Summary: On the cover this month: Francis Crick's original sketch of the structure of DNA. Drawn on a scrap of A4 paper, this image provided the first look at the doublehelix structure of DNA. It is important to remember that 60 years ago there were no software programs for drawing structures, and neither Francis Crick nor James Watson had any artistic talent. Francis Crick asked his wife Odile, an accomplished artist, to abandon her painting and illustrate her husband's work. It was Odile's exquisite and iconic drawing of the double helix that was included in their 1953 research study that was submitted to Nature. Not only that, it was James Watson's sister Betty who typed the historic paper. It makes one wonder how Crick and Watson would have fared without the help of two women, Odile Crick and Betty Watson. Skipping ahead 60 years, this month's issue of Clinical Chemistry contains what we believe is an important research study and accompanying editorial describing maternal plasma DNA bisulfite sequencing for noninvasive prenatal testing.
