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Gregor Mendel
The first person to shed light on the way in which characteristics are passed down the generations. He deducted that genes are pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. Basically DNA. He recognized the mathematical patterns of inheritance from one generation to the next. In his 1866 published paper, Mendel described the action of 'invisible' factors in providing for visible traits in predictable ways. We now know that the 'invisible' traits he had identified were genes. -
Friedrich Miescher
Friedrich Miescher majored in physiological chemistry. He worked in the laboratory of Felix Hoppe-Seyler at the University of Tubingen in 1868-1869, he was the first to isolate and chemically characterize DNA. He showed that this substance was derived from the nucleus of the cell alone and therefore named it "nuclein". He then went on to prove that "nuclein" was present in many cells and contained phosphorous in addition to the more usual components of organic molecules. -
Sir Archibald Edward Garrod
The first person to associate Mendel's theories with a human disease. Through discussions with Mendelian advocate William Bateson, he concluded that alkaptonuria was a recessive disorder and, in 1902, he published The Incidence of Alkaptonuria: A Study in Chemical Individuality. This was the first published account of recessive inheritance in humans. It was also the first time that a genetic disorder had been attributed to "inborn errors of metabolism." -
Oswald Avery
Oswald made the breakthrough, that was deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was identified as the 'transforming principle'. Avery worked with pneumonia, pneumococcus, and had discovered that if a live form of pneumococcus was mixed with an inert , the harmless bacteria would soon become deadly. He then combined forces with Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty. He soon noted that the substance was a nucleic acid, and with further analysis, it was revealed to be DNA. -
Erwin Chargaff
Chargaff read Avery's scientific paper. It had an impact on him and changed the course of his career. Quoted, “Avery gave us the first text of a new language, or rather he showed us where to look for it. I resolved to search for this text. I decided to bring all that we had been working on or to bring it to a quick conclusion”. He first devised a method of analysing the nitrogenous components and sugars of DNA. He wrote two papers, detailing the complete analysis of a number of DNA preparations. -
Rosalind Franklin
Franklin's role was to set up and improve the X-ray crystallography unit. She worked with a scientist, and a student, and was able to produce two sets of high-resolution photographs of DNA fibres. She then calculated the dimensions of the strands and deduced that the phosphates were on the outside of what was probably a helical structure. Were described as, "the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken," and her research came close to discovering the DNA structure. -
James Watson and Francis Crick
James Watson visited Cambridge University and happened to meet Francis Crick. The pair immediately hit it off and Watson remained at the university to study the structure of DNA at Cavendish Laboratory. Using available X-ray data and model building, they were able to solve the puzzle that had baffled scientists for decades. They published the now-famous paper in Nature in April, 1953 and in 1962 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with Maurice Wilkins. -
George Gamow and the “RNA Tie Club”
Scientists entered a period of chaos, in which they rushed to be the first to decipher the genetic code. Physicist George Gamow decided to make the race more engaging - he made an exclusive club known as the “RNA Tie Club”, in which each member would put forward their ideas about how nucleotide bases were transformed into proteins by the body's cells. He handpicked 20 members and they each wore a tie. Ironically, the man who was to discover the genetic code, Marshall Nirenberg, was not a member. -
Marshall Nirenberg
Marshall Nirenberg arrived at the National Institute of Health as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. DeWitt Stetten, Jr.'s laboratory. The pair performed an experiment which showed that a chain of the repeating bases uracil forced a protein chain made of one repeating amino acid, phenylalanine. This was a breakthrough experiment which proved that the code could be broken.Nirenberg and Matthaei ground up E.Coli bacteria cells, in order to rupture their walls and release the cytoplasm. -
Frederick Sanger
Cambridge graduate Frederick Sanger started working for A. C. Chibnall, identifying the free amino groups in insulin. Through this work, he became the first person to order the amino acids and obtain a protein sequence, for which he later won a Nobel Prize. He initially began working on sequencing RNA, as it was smaller, but these techniques were soon applicable to DNA and eventually became the dideoxy method used in sequencing reactions today. -
Huntington's disease
HD is a rare disease which usually manifests itself between 30 and 45 years of age . It's characterised by a loss of motor control, jerky movements, psychiatric symptoms, dementia, and altered personality. As the disease is adult onset, many people have already had children before they are diagnosed and have passed the gene onto the next generation.In 1983, a genetic marker linked to HD was found on Chromosome 4, making it the first genetic disease to be mapped using DNA polymorphisms. -
Resources
https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline#12
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1968/nirenberg/biographical/
http://www.dnai.org/timeline/
https://www.preceden.com/timelines/317130-history-of-dna
http://www.dnaftb.org/19/bio-3.html
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-dna-structure-and-function-watson-397
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1968/nirenberg/biographical/
