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First Vaccine
Created by Edward Jenner for the smallpox disease. The vaccine derived from the weaker version of the disease, cowpox. -
First Public Vaccination Campaign
Smallpox produced the death of up to thirty percent of those infected, so Jenner's preventive method spread quickly. The Spanish government designed and supported a ten-year effort to carry smallpox vaccine to its American and Asian territories in a chain of arm-to-arm vaccination of children. An expedition directed by Doctor Francisco Xavier de Balmis sailed from Corunna in November 1803, stopping in the Canary Islands, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Balmis led a subexpedition to Cuba, Mexico, and -
Discovery of Genetic Inheritance Patterns
Gregor Medel discovers genetic inheritance patterns through his study with peas. -
First Antibiotic
Discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, although mass production of it did not start until the 1940's. -
First Food Sterelization
French patent issued for the irradiation of food as a method by which to preserve foods and delay spoilage. -
Avery's Experiment
Oswald Avery and his collegues conducted an experiment in which they injected a mouse with a dead virulen t strand and a nonvirulent strand of the same virus in the same mouse to see whether the mouse would live or die. The mouse died and that DNA wasn't just proteins but a hereditary material. Also known as the McLeod's Experiment. -
McLeod's Experiment
Colin MacLeod and his collegues conducted an experiment in which they injected a mouse with a dead virulen t strand and a nonvirulent strand of the same virus in the same mouse to see whether the mouse would live or die. The mouse died and that DNA wasn't just proteins but a hereditary material. Also known as the Avery's Experiment. -
Hershey-Chase Experiment
An experiment conducted by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase that proved that DNA was a genetic material. They had replaced the virus' DNA in the head with radioactive DNA and let the virus infect a cell, observing the cell to see the radioactive DNA was indeed in the newly infected cell. -
Discovery of DNA Structure
James Watson and Francis Crick publish a short article revealing their discovery and finding of the DNA structure. -
First Cloned Organism
Tong Dizhou cloned a fish by inserting DNA from a male carp into the egg of a female carp. There is dispute over if the carp or the tadpole was the first to be cloned; however, the results from the tadpole clone couldn't be produced again so some dub Tong Dizhou as the first to clone an organism. -
Discovery of Proteins
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. -
Discovery of Enzymes
Hamilton Smith and Kent Wilcox isolated the first restriction enzyme, HindII, that could cut DNA molecules within specific recognition sites -
First Recombinant Organism
Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer created the first recombinant DNA organism using recombinant DNA techniques pioneered a year earlier by Paul Berg. Cohen and Boyer removed plasmids, small rings of DNA located in a cell's cytoplasm, not the nucleus, from a cell. Then they used restriction enzymes to cut the DNA at precise locations and then recombined the DNA strands in the special configurations that they desired. Finally, Cohen and Boyer inserted the spliced DNA into E. Coli bacteria cells whic -
First Gene Sequenced
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 adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. -
Insulin
Insulin was first produced in 1978 by Genentech In Ecoli bacteria. Insulin was created by two articifial genes for the two proteins that comprise an insulin molecule. -
First Transgenic Animal
Scientist implanted foreign genes into a fertalized egg which they then transfered to a surrogate mother. The genes were documents by their functuality and further proved when the offspring where breed and passed onto their own offspring. -
PCR Technique Concieved
Developed by Kary Millis, this technique was created to amplify a piece of DNA in order to make a particular DNA strand. This technique is indispensable to the medical and biological research fields. -
Human Genome Project
A project that was intend to map out the entire human genome in order to understand the genes within the body and how they're effected by viruses and cancer. The project was successfully completed in 2003, two years ahead of schedule and under budget. -
First GM Crop Sold
The tomatos that were genetically modified so that they would ripen but not soften. They were proven to be a financial disaster and they where taken off of the market. -
Human Embryonic Stem Cell Line Established
James Thomas and coworkers of the University of Wisconsin derived the first human stem cell line. These pluripotent cells turned out to be able to turn into any type of cell in the body.
