The Dynamic Messenger of Life: RNA and the Harry Winston Histoire de Tourbillon N°8

DNA is the immense, unalterable, well-guarded master key in the library of life. But for the plans in that library to come into being, for the living machines called proteins to be built inside the cell, RNA, ribonucleic acid, comes onto the stage.

If every craftsman on earth were gathered together, they would still have to bow before the motionless majesty of DNA and before the dynamic, ceaselessly running network of messengers that RNA maintains inside the cell. In the world of mechanical watchmaking, one of the rare masterpieces able to reflect that dizzying dynamism, that carrying of messages and that double-layered complexity is the Harry Winston Histoire de Tourbillon N°8.

Let us make the biological roles of RNA concrete in the mind. The first role belongs to the messenger. DNA never leaves the nucleus of the cell; the master plan cannot be taken out of the library. Messenger RNA, mRNA, takes a copy of the gene in question and carries it to the ribosomes, the production plants of the cell. It is the runner who photographs the master architectural plan in the library of a vast palace and hurries it out to the craftsmen on the site. Without that runner, no matter how magnificent the plan of the palace, not one brick could be laid upon another.

The second role belongs to the carrier. Transfer RNA, tRNA, reads the copy that arrives at the ribosome and brings the building blocks, the amino acids, in order. It is the crane operator on the site. It looks at the plan that has come in, says that this brick goes here and that mortar goes on top of it, and sets the right material in place at exactly the right second. The third role belongs to the bench. Ribosomal RNA, rRNA, forms the main body of the ribosome; it is the site itself, joining the message to the material and synthesising the protein. It works like the assembly line in a car plant: the parts and the plan arrive, and along that line they become a working engine.

The fourth difference lies in the structure itself. Where DNA is double-stranded and rigid, RNA is single-stranded. And in place of the letter thymine in DNA, RNA carries the letter uracil. If DNA is a heavy volume of an encyclopaedia, RNA is a notebook you can carry in your pocket, bend, write on and erase at speed. That flexibility is what lets it slip anywhere inside the cell at any moment. Permanence is one molecule’s work and movement the other’s; a design that wants both at once has to make two molecules.

The Histoire de Tourbillon N°8, which stands at the summit of Harry Winston’s watchmaking, is built in just this way: multi-layered, in constant motion, carrying a message, like RNA inside the cell. Two biaxial tourbillon cages occupy the left half of the dial. They are not copies of one another and they do not turn in step; each works independently on its own axes. The real feat lies between them. A spherical differential gathers the time the two cages give and takes the average of it, so that a single verdict emerges. If one runs ahead and the other behind, the watch tells you the middle of the two.

For the reader, that arrangement brings to mind the way reading is done in the cell. The ribosome does not trust a single letter blindly either; the message is read in codes of three letters, each code is confirmed against a match, and the result comes out as one chain. Two independent cages and the spherical differential that unites them recall the mechanical counterpart of the same logic.

The three-dimensional curved hour and minute indications on the right of the dial present the information not with a traditional pair of hands but like a strip being read. Harry Winston describes these parts as aluminium cones; they sit off centre and pass beneath a small red marker each. The look of it recalls the rhythm with which the ribosome reads the mRNA strip code by code and turns it into protein. The small red and white drum below announces the power reserve; it is the counter that says how much further the chain can run.

The mechanism behind all this is the hand-wound calibre HW4503. The ninety two jewels engraved on the back show at how many points this three-dimensional architecture has to reduce friction. The open sapphire back lets all these layers be watched from underneath as well.

The fifty point nine millimetre case in eighteen carat white gold is seventeen point three millimetres thick and water resistant to three bar. The first version, with its black dial treatment, and the second, with the red, are each limited to ten pieces; both use selective rhodium plating, the strap is black alligator and the buckle white gold. The third is a single example, and it ties the jewellery side of Harry Winston to the watchmaking side.

The case of that single piece is fifty one point six millimetres, and its eighteen carat white gold dial is set with four hundred and fifteen baguette-cut diamonds, some seventeen point eight five carats in all. The strap is dark blue alligator, stitched with 950 platinum thread. The baguette stones laid side by side call to mind that flawless chain in the library, while the transparent sapphire body within recalls the temporary, functional bridges RNA builds in the fluid of the cell.

That one molecule is permanent and the other mobile is not a deficiency but a division of labour. The Creator did not load the keeping of information and the carrying of it onto the same structure; he gave silence to one and running to the other. That the same division should appear in a watch as two separate cages and one differential uniting them is a small echo of an order the human hand can only imitate.

DNA is the endless, silent library of information; RNA is the moving song into which that information turns as it comes to life. The Harry Winston Histoire de Tourbillon N°8 is the most magnificent mechanical counterpart of that biological song, ticking away on the wrist.

The watch on its maker’s own site: Harry Winston, Histoire de Tourbillon 8