DNA timeline

DNA

Period: Feb 8, 1850 to Mar 7, 2016

Gregor Mendel's pea plant study

Mar 7, 1856

conducted between 1856 and 1863 it established many of the rules of heredity.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Mendel published his results

Mar 8, 1866

Gregor Mendel published the results of his investigation of the inheritance of "factors" in pea plants.
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Friedrich Miescher indentifies "nuclein"

Mar 8, 1869

Miescher identified nuclein in the nuclei of human white blood cells which today is known as DNA. It took 50 years for the scientific community to appreciate his work.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Mendel's work finally discovered

Mar 8, 1900

16 years after his death Mendel's pea plant research it finally made its way up to the scientific community, a dutch botanist and geneticist Hugo de Vries, German botanist and geneticist Carl Erich Correns and Austrian botanist Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg all independently rediscovered Mendel's work . Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Sir Archibald Edward Garrod

Mar 8, 1902

Sir Archibald Edward Garrod is the first to associate Mendel's theories with a human disease, he had studied at Oxford University. 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. Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Oswald Avery

Mar 8, 1944

Oswald Avery identifies DNA as the 'transforming principle'. Avery was an immunochemist at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Avery had worked for many years with the bacterium responsible for pneumonia, pneumococcus, and had discovered that if a live but harmless form of pneumococcus was mixed with an inert but lethal form, the harmless bacteria would soon become deadly.
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Erwin Chargaff

Mar 8, 1950

Erwin Chargaff discovers that DNA composition is species specific, Chargaff was determined to begin work on the chemistry of nucleic acids. His first move was to devise a method of analysing the nitrogenous components and sugars of DNA from different species.
Chargaff subsequently submitted two papers to the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) detailing the complete qualitative analysis of a number of DNA preparations.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Rosalind Franklin

Mar 8, 1952

Conducted a large portion of research which led to the understanding of the stucture of DNA. Franklin's photographs were described as, "the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken" by J. D. Bernal, and between 1951 and 1953 her research came close to discovering the structure of DNA. Unfortunately, she was ultimately beaten to the post by Thomas Watson and Frances Crick.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

James Watson and Francis Crick

Mar 8, 1953

In 1951, James Watson visited Cambridge University and happened to meet Francis Crick. Despite an age difference of 12 years, 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. Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

George Gamow

Mar 9, 1953

Following Watson and Crick's discovery, scientists entered a period of frenzy, in which they rushed to be the first to decipher the genetic code. Theoretical physicist and astronomer George Gamow decided to make the race more interesting - he created 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.

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An additional copy of chromosome 21 linked to Down's syndrome

Mar 9, 1959

Cytogenetics first had a major impact on disease diagnosis in 1959, when an additional copy of chromosome 21 was linked to Down's syndrome. In the late 1960s and early 70s, stains such as Giemsa were introduced, which bind to chromosomes in a non-uniform fashion, creating bands of light and dark areas.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Marshall Nirenberg

Mar 9, 1965

Nirenberg and Matthaei ground up E.Coli bacteria cells, in order to rupture their walls and release the cytoplasm, which they then used in their experiments. These experiments used 20 test tubes, each filled with a different amino acid - the scientists wanted to know which amino acid would be incorporated into a protein after the addition of a particular type of synthetic RNA.
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Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Frederick Sanger

Mar 9, 1977

n 1962, Sanger moved with the Medical Research Council to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where DNA sequencing became a natural extension of his work with proteins. 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.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Huntington's disease is the first mapped genetic disease

Mar 9, 1983

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. However, the gene was not finally isolated until 1993.
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The first gene

Mar 11, 1990

The first gene found to be associated with increased susceptibility to familial breast and ovarian cancer is identified. They named the gene they identified, which was located on chromosome 17, BRCA1. However, it was clear that not all breast cancer families were linked to BRCA1, and, with continued research, a second gene BRCA2 was located on chromosome 13.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

The Human Genome Project begins

Mar 11, 1990

The project's goals included: mapping the human genome and determining all 3.2 billion letters in it, mapping and sequencing the genomes of other organisms, if it would be useful to the study of biology, developing technology for the purpose of analysing DNA and studying the social, ethical and legal implications of genome research.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Haemophilus Influenzae is the first bacterium genome sequenced

Mar 11, 1995

Known as H.flu, Haemophilus Influenzae is a bacterium that can cause meningitis and ear and respiratory infections in children. Prior to this breakthrough, scientists had only managed to sequence the genome of a few viruses, which are around ten times shorter than that of H.flu.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline

Dolly the sheep is cloned

Mar 11, 1996

Dolly was created by scientists working at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, from the udder cell of a six-year-old Finn Dorset white sheep. By altering the growth medium, the scientists found a way to 'reprogram' the cell, which was then injected into an unfertilised egg that had had its nucleus removed. The egg was then cultured to reach the embryo stage, before being implanted into a surrogate mother.
Source : https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline