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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 adrenine equaled those of thymine and the number of units of cytosine eaqualed those of guanine.
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Beatle and Tatum proposed the "One gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis. In 1944 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 protein.
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DNA plasmids were isolated and purifies 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 recombinant DNA in microorganisms. Paul Berg was a key organizer.
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Sanger and Gilbert found a way to sequence DNA. Given an unknown piece of DNA, they were able to read the correct order of bases of adrenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.
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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 pattern made of ones DNA through a digest by different enzymes. This DNA fingerprint was called a Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. (RFLP)
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Louise Joy Brown was born, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilization, in which sperm and egg are joined in a petri dish. The fertilized egg is later implanted in a womb.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically altered life forms can be patented. This resulted in a huge startup of biotech companies.
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Ohio University scientists made the first transgenic animals.
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Eli Lilly Company placed a human insulin gene inside bacteria.
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Schell, Chilton, Van Montagu, Fraley, and Horsch transformed plants with Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer.
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Kary Mullis invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA in the laboratory.
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Jeffries applied RFLP in DNA profiling to the study of criminal cases.
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Genes were moved into an organism through the use of a gene gun.
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NIH revised safety guidelines for recombinant DNA to include plants grown in greenhouse and animals raised in barns.
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Andrew Fire and Craige Mello discovered RNA interference, silencing of genes, in the worm C. elegans.
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Kohler, Milstein, and Jerne used monoclonal antibody (MAb) technology.
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Ian Wilmut cloned dolly the sheep from an adult cell for a eweat the Roslin Institute in Scotland,
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Maynard Olson and colleagues at Washington University invented "yeast artifical chromosomes," or YACs, which are expressed vectors for large proteins.
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DNA microarray (DNA chip) technology, looking at the expression of all the genes of an organism at one time on a microscope slide or silicon chip, was developed.
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Dabiri and Garner invented an automated DNA sequencer that had a capability of sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour, 5-30 times faster than existing sequencers. Technology like this greatly sped up the human Genome Project.
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Ron Breaker coined the term riboswitch for part of an mRNA molecule that can regulate its own activity and therefore gene expression.
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Announcement was made of the completion of the Human Genome Project (initiated in 1990) by Francis Collins and Craig Venter. The project provided the ability to find genes and gave rise to the sequencing of other genomes.
