A Celebration of the Spiral

The spiral structure of DNA is known as a double helix .  This term describes the two strands of DNA that twist around each other, forming a shape similar to a twisted ladder.  The double helix is stabilized by hydrogen bonds between the nucleotide bases, which are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.  This structure was first described by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, and it has become an iconic representation of molecular biology.