Question

In 1953, Watson and Crick weren’t initially sure what tautomeric forms of the DNA bases were most common under physiological conditions. They went around asking a bunch of chemists what they thought. Why was this such a crucial issue?

Answer 1

The structure of DNA has complimentary base pairs . Any combination of bases cannot form the DNA.  Adenine present on one strand is paired with Thymine and guanine found one one strand bind with cytocine .These A-T and G-C pairing are known as complementary base pairs. But these are the informations that we know today . Watson and Crick weren't initially sure about this structure because many scientists were working on DNA structure and everyone has their own conclusions and hypothesis .so they need proof upon their hypothesis . So they went around asking a bunch of chemists what they thought. Because it can help them and it helped when they met with Franklin and saw his data which gave them the proof of their hypothsis . If the hypothsis was not represnted with proof ,it would have been discarded.