DNA Science

Mogan

Mar 5, 1910

Studying fruit flies, Thomas Hunt Mogan discovered that genes were on chromosomes.

Griffth

Mar 5, 1928

Fred griggith, using mice, proved that genetic material could be moved from onme strain of bacteria to another.

Fleming

Mar 5, 1928

Sir Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin from a fungus. Many of his ideas are used to develop biotechnology drugs today.

Chargaff

Mar 5, 1935

Chargaff showed that in DNA the number of units of adenine equaled those of thymine and the number of units of cytosine equaled those of guanine.

Beadle and Tatum

Mar 5, 1941

Beadle and Tatum propsed the "one gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis.

Avery, McCarty, and Macleod

Mar 5, 1944

Avery, McCarty, and Macleod established that indeed DNA was hereditary material.

Hershey and Chase

Jan 5, 1953

Using their famous "blender experiment", Hershey and Chase proved viruses replicated using DNA and confrimed the role of DNA as the hereditary material.

Rosalind and Franklin and Maurice Wilkins

Mar 5, 1953

Rosalind and Franklin and Maurice Wilkins established through X-ray crystallography that DNA was indeed a double helix.

Watson and Crick

Apr 5, 1953

Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.

Hayes

Oct 5, 1953

Hayes disovered plasmid DNA, circular pieces of DNA found in bacteria.

Gilbert

Mar 6, 1961

Walter Gilbert discovered the mechansim of gene expression through his study of messenger RNA

Bacterial enzymes

Mar 6, 1962

Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restriction enzymes that cut DNA

Khorana and Nirenberg

Mar 6, 1966

Khorana and Nirenberg discovered the 64 codons that code for the 20 amino acids making up proteins.

DNA plasmids

Mar 6, 1967

DNA plasmids were isolated and purified by Vinograd