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Experiments on Plant Hybridization
Gregory Mendel presented his paper on genetic traits in pea plants to the Natural History of Society of Brunn. The paper's main breakthrough was the discovery that one inheritable trait would be dominant to its recessive alternative. In 1866. In 1866, Mendel's work was published in the Proceedings of Natural History Society of Brunn. -
Friedrich Miescher and DNA
Meischer decided to conduct his experiments on leuocytes as they were easily obtained in appropriate quantities from body fluids like pus. He then produced a salt, sodium sulfate in which the cells were filtered. After that the nuclues was removed from the cytoplasm by a mixture of alkalis and acids to arrive at a precipitate which would later turn out to be DNA,composed of elements like phosphorus and nitrogen. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00439-007-0433-0 -
The origin of the term "Gene"
In 1889, Hugo De Vries, a dutch botanist and geneticist, relied on Charles Darwin's theory of Pangenesis to arrive at a conclusion that different traits in an organism were transferred or inherited through some particles known as pangenes.
http://www.esp.org/books/devries/pangenesis/facsimile/ -
Boveri–Sutton chromosome theory
The theory is the result of the experimentation conducted by Walter Sutton, an American geneticist and Theodor Boveri, a german biologist. It was published and credited due to papers written by Sutton in 1902 and 1903. Boveri has been experiementing independently during the same period of time. The theory is quite important as it identifies the fact that chromosomes are the carriers of genetic material. It makes important confirmations as well in the structure of chromosomes. -
Thomas Hunt Morgan and nature of Gene
After the discovery of genetic linkage by british geneticists like William Bateson, Edith Rebecca Saunders and Reginald Punnet, Thomas was able to expand on this concept through his experimentation on Drosophila melanogaster which lead in 1910-1911 in the confirmation of the tendency of genes, located with great proximity in a Loci to be inherited together during meiosis Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life by Robert E. Kohler -
Griffith's experiment on bacterial DNA
This was pretty much the first experiment that Frederick conducted suggesting that bacteria had the capability of transferring their DNA or genetic info through a process known as transformation. In the experiment, Griffith used two strains of bacteria that infect mice and heated one which rendered it ineffective. But when both strains were mixed, the properties of the dead bacteria were transfered and the reason behind this was DNA. http://mic.sgmjournals.org/content/73/1/1.short -
The Double-Helix DNA structure
James D. Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double helix structure of the DNA through x-ray diffraction of crystalline DNA. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1962/watson-bio.html -
The first sequencing of a gene
The Bacteriophage MS2 genome was the first genome to be fully sequenced by Walter Fiers, a belgian molecular biologist and his team.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v237/n5350/abs/237082a0.html -
The Human Genome Project.
The Human Genome project, is an international 13- year effort that had the goal of identifying all the human genes(20,000-25,000) and make them accessible for later biological studies and medical needs. It was going to take 15 years but with the advancement of technology, the process was quite accelerated.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml
