On a foggy Saturday morning in 1953, a tall, skinny 24-year-old man fiddled with shapes he had cut out of cardboard. They represented fragments of a DNA molecule, and young James Watson was trying to figure how they fit together in a way that let DNA do its job as the stuff of genes.

The laws of inheritance are quite unknown,” Charles Darwin acknowledged in 1859. The discovery of DNA’s shape altered how we conceived of life itself.

Photos and letters show how James Watson and Francis Crick raced to uncover the double helix structure of DNA.

DNA isn't just a long string of genetic code, but an intricate 3D structure folded inside each cell. That means the tools used to study DNA need to be just as sophisticated—able to read not only the code itself,

DNA evidence led to the indictment of Michael Harris, already incarcerated on unrelated charges, in a 2000 kidnapping and rape case in Northeast Baltimore, police said.

Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro's ordered the testing following requests by twice-convicted killer John Bittrolff, who had sought to have his murders convictions overturned.