It’s the astonishing $6 million DNA letter. A bidder just paid over that amazing amount at an auction today (April 10) for a letter British scientist Francis Crick wrote to his 12-year-old son explaining the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, which he and research partner James Watson had discovered.

The winning bid came at $5.3 million, with the final price tag for the “Secret of Life” letter coming in at the figure of $6,059,750, according to auction house Christie’s who facilitated the sale.

The seven-page-handwritten note by Crick dated Mach 19, 1953, contains diagrams that outline the scientists’ model for how "des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid" replicates and encodes instruction for the development and function of living things.

Crick wrote to his son in the letter, “"In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life." Michael, the recipient of the letter, was at boarding school at the time. Crick signed off to his son, “"lots of love, Daddy."

As legend would tell it, when Crick and Watson made their discovery on Feb. 28, 1953, Crick announced inside a local Cambridge pub called the Eagle, "We have discovered the secret of life." Their findings wouldn’t be published in the journal Nature until two months after their Eureka moment, and the note written to his son Michael is likely one of the first written explanation of the discovery.

"As far as we know this is the first public description of these ideas that have become the keystone of molecular biology and which have spawned a whole new industry and generations of follow on discovery," wrote Michael Crick on Christie's catalogue involving the sale.

The auction was handled by Christie’s, which had valued the letter at $1-2 million and compared it to a letter Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning about the potential of nuclear weapons. Christie’s sold the Einstein letter for over $2 million in 2002.

According to the auction house, the Crick’s family plans to give half of the proceeds from the sale of the DNA letter to the Salk Institute of California. The institute hosted the scientist, who died in 2004, to study consciousness later in his career.

A notebook of Crick, valued between $4,000 to $6,000, was sold for $17,000 during the auction. And a drawing of Crick made by his wife, Odile Crick, an artist who drew the double helix for her husband and Watson, was sold for $14,000. The initial estimate of Christie’s for the drawing was $8,000-$12,000.

The three items were among the Crick-related mementos on sale this week in New York. The Heritage Auctions will also sell the Nobel medal, struck in 23-carat gold, that Crick received for the discovery in 1962, alongside Watson and Maurice Wilkins on Thursday, April 11.

The value Heritage Auctions has estimated on the medal and accompanying diploma is $500,000. As of Wednesday afternoon, the standing bid on the item is already at $280,000. The April 11 sale will also include Crick’s award check with his endorsement on the back, the scientist’s lab coat, his gardening logs, his nautical journals and several books.