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Robert Hooke coined the term "cells" and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek observed the firets microorganisms because of the invention of the microscope.
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He discovered the simple laws of inheritance of traits that allowed one to predict the outcome of crosses with certain traits.
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He descrived the scientific basis for fermentation, wine making, and the brewing of beer, established the science of microbiology, and proposed the Germ Theory, claiming that microorganisms were responsible for infectious diseases.
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He found nucleic acid in white blood cells from pus in bandages. This later led scientists to believe that DNA might be the ingeritable material of an organism.
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Studying fruit flies, Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered that genes were on chromosomes.
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Fred Griffith, using mice, proved that genetic material could be moved from one strain of bacteria to another.
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Sir Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin from a fungus. Many of his ideas are used to develop biotechnology drugs today.
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Chargaff showed that in DNA the number of units of adenine equaled those of thymine and the number of units of cystosine equaled those of guanine.
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Beadle and Tatum proposed the "One gene produces one enzyme" theory hypothesis.
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Avery, McCarty, and McLeod established that indeed DNA was the hereditary material that was transferred.
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Using their famous "blender experiment," Hershey and Chase proved viruses replicated using DNA and confirmed the role of DNA as the hereditary material.
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Rosalind Franklin and maurice Wilkins established through X-ray crystallography that DNA was indeed a double helix.
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Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.
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Hayes discovered plasmid DNA, circular pieces of DNA found in bacteria.
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Walter Gilbert discovered the mechanism of gene expression through his study of messenger RNA.
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Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restriction enzymes that cut DNA.
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Khorana and Nirenberg discovered the 64 codons (the triplet code of 3 bases in DNA) that code for the 20 amino acids making up proteins.
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DNA plasmids were isolated and puified by Vinograd
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Madel and Higa were responsible for the first transformation of the bacterium Escherichia coli.
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Cloning experiments were conducted by Boyer and Cohen.
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Genentech, the world's first genetic engineering company, was founded.
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140 scientists met to draw up guidelines for work with rembinant DNA in microorganisms. Paul Berg was a key organizer.
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Sanger and Gilbert found a way to sequence DNA. They are able to read the correct order of bases of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine from an unknown piece of DNA.
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Boyer inserted a synthetic insulin gene into E. coli.
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Botstein found that one could be identified by the patter made of one's DNA through a digest of diefferen enzymes.
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The first baby is born resulting from in vitro fertilization. This is where sperm and egg are joined in a petri dish and the egg is later implanted into the womb.
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The U.S. Supreme Court rules that any genetically altered life form can be patented resulting in a huge startup of biotech companies.
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Ohio University made the first transgenic animal.
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The Eli Lilly Company placed a human insulin gene inside bacteria.
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Schell, Chilton, Van Montagu, Fraley, and Horsch used an Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer to transform plants.
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PCR is invented by Kary Mulis to amplify DNA in the laboratory.
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RFLP in DNA profiling was applied to the study of criminal cases by Jeffries
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An automated flourescence sequencer was invented which sped up the labor-intense process.
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A gene gun was used to move genes into an organism.
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NIH revised the safety guidelines for recombinant DNA. It now includes plants grown in greenhouses and animals raised in barns.
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RNA interference, or silencing of genes is found in the worm C. elegans by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello.
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Monoclonal antibody technology is used by Kohler, Milstein, and Jerne.
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Maynard Olson and colleagues at Washington University invented YACs, which are expression vectors for large proteins.
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Dolly the sheep is cloned from an adult cell of a ewe at the Roslin Institute in Scotland by Ian Wilmut.
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Looking at the expression of all the genes in an organism at one time on a microscope slide or silicon chip, or DNA microarray technology, was developed.
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An automated DNA sequencer which had the capability of sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour which is 5 to 30 times faster than existing sequencers was invented by Dabiri and Garner.
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THe term "riboswitch" is coined by Ron Breaker, for part of an mRNA molecule that can regulate its own activity and therefore gene expression.
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Francis Collins and Craig Venter announce the completion of the Human Genome Project. THe project provided the ability to find genes and gave rise to the sequencing of other genomes.
