over our gooseberry pie we looked at the pros and cons of one, two, three, and four chains, quickly dismissing one-chain helices as incompatible with the evidence in our hands. As to the forces that held the chains together, the best guess seemed to be salt bridges in which divalent cations like Mg++ held together two or more phosphate groups. Admittedly there was no evidence that Rosy’s samples contained any divalent ions, and so we might be sticking our necks out. On the other hand, there was absolutely no evidence against our hunch. If only the King’s groups had thought about models, they
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