-
Robert Hooke founded cells and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek observed the first microorganisms through microscopes.
-
Gregor Mandel discovered the simple laws of inheritance of traits that allowed one to predict the outcome of crossses with certian traits.
-
Johann Miescher found nucleic acid in white blood cells from pus in bandages, which later led to scientists to believe that DNA might be the inheritable material of an organism.
-
Studying fruit flies. Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered that genes were on chromosomes.
-
Sir Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin from a fungus. Many of his ideas are used to develop biotechnology drugs today.
-
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 proposed the "one gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis.
-
Avery, McCarty, and McLeod established that indeed DNA was the hereditay material that was transferred.
-
Using thier famouss "blender experiment," Hershey and Chase proved viruses replicater using DNA and confirmed the role of DNA as the hereditary material.
-
Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.
-
Walter Gilbert discovered the mechanism or gene expression through his study of messenger RNA
-
Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restirction enzymes that cut DNA.
-
Khorana and Nirenberg discovered the 64 codons (triplet code of 3 bases in DNA) that code for the 20 amino acids making up protiens.
-
DNA plasmids were isolated and purified by Vinograd.
-
Madel and Higa were responsible for the first transformation of the bacterium Escherichia coli.
-
Cloning experiments were conducted by Boyer and Chen.
-
Genentech, the wrold's first engineering company, was founded.
-
140 scientists met to draw up guidelines for work with recombinant DNA in microorganisms. Paul Berg was a key organizer.
-
Sanger and Gilbert found a way to sequence DNA. Given an unknown piece of DNA, they were able to read the correct orrder of bases of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.
-
boyer inserted a sunthetic insulin gene into E. coli.
-
Botstein found that one could be identified by the pettern made of one's DNA through a digest by different enzymes. This DNA fingerprint was called a Restriction Fradment Length Polymorphism (RFLP).
-
Louise Joy Brown was born, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilization, in which spern and egg are joined in a petri dish. The egg is later implanted in a womb.
-
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically altered life forms can be patented. This resulted in a huge startup of biotech companies.
-
Ohio Univercity scientists made the first transgentic animals.
-
Eli Lilly Company placed a human insulin gene inside bacteria.
-
Schell, Chilton, Van Montagu, Fraley, and Horsch transformed plants with Agrobacterium-meciated gene transfer.
-
Kary Mullis invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA in the laboratory.
-
Jefferies applied RFLP in DNA profiling to the study of criminal cases.
-
An automated fluorescence sequencer was invented,speeding up the labor-intense process.
-
Genes were moved into an organism throught the use of a gene gun.
-
NIH revised safety guidlines for recombinant DNA to include plants grown in greenhouses and animals raised in barns.
-
Andrew Fire and Craig Mello discovered RNA interfence, silencing of genes, in the worm C.elegans.
-
Kohler, Milstein, and Jerne used monoclonal antibody (MAb) technology,
-
Maynard Olson and colleagues at Washington University invented "yeast artificial chromosomes," or YACs, which are expression vectors for large protiens.
-
Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly the sheep from an adult cell of an ewe at the Roslin Institue in Scotland.
-
DNA microarray (DNA chip) techology, looking at the expression of all the genes of an organism at one time on a microscope slide or silicon chip, was develped.
-
Dabiri and Garner invented an automated DNA sequencer that had a capability or sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour, 5 to 30 times faster than exsting sequencers. Technology like this greatly sped up the human genome project.
-
Ron Breaker coined the term riboswitch for part of an mRNA molecule that can regulate its own activity and therefore gene expression.
-
announcement was made of the completion of the human genome project (initiated in 1990) by Francis Colllins and Craig Venter. the prject provided the ability to find genes adn gave rise to the sequencing of other genomes.
