Watson-Crick helix /wôt″sən krik″/ [John Dewey Watson, American geneticist, b. 1928; Francis H. Crick, British biochemist, 1916–2004; Gk, helix, coil] , a model of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule proposed by Watson and Crick as two right-handed polynucleotide chains coiled around the same axis as a double helix. The purine and pyrimidine bases of each strand are on the inside of the double helix and paired according to a Watson-Crick hydrogen-bonding base-pairing rule. Variations in the sequences of the bases determine the genetic information transmitted by the DNA molecule. Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize in 1962.
