DNA Scientists Timeline

  • Friedrich Miescher

    Friedrich Miescher
    He was known for extracting DNA and discovered exciting results, which led to be one of the most important building blocks for the future. He found out how to isolate DNA from a cell and he experimented with white blood cells.
  • Frederick Griffith

    Frederick Griffith
    He discovered how to isolate S and R cells in mice and heat tested them. He found out that the heat killed the 5 cells.
  • Barbara McClintock

    Barbara McClintock
    She discovered that some genes could be mobile and mobile elements like transposon. The “jumping genes” could move along the chromosome to a different site, and these changes affect other genes.
  • Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty & Colin McCleod

    Oswald Avery,  Maclyn McCarty & Colin McCleod
    Their main goal was to figure out the transforming principle. They discovered this by first injecting proteins and lipids, which destroyed the 5 cell enzymes. They also learned that DNA changes the cell.
  • Erwin Chargaff

    Erwin Chargaff
    He was known for his discovery that thymine and adenine are guanine with cytosine and equally proportional. He also found information that different species have different proportions of nucleotides.
  • Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase

    Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase
    They discovered that DNA transmits a full complement of genetic information and satisfies the first property of hereditary. They discovered this by injecting a virus into a bacteria cell.
  • Rosalind Franklin & Maurice Wilkins

    Rosalind Franklin & Maurice Wilkins
    They were able to crystallize and examine a DNA molecule with an x-ray. Watson and Crick used this research and Photo 51 to build the DNA molecule .
  • Linus Pauling

    Linus Pauling
    He discovered the alpha-helix and the beta-sheet in a DNA molecule. This new information was the backbone of many proteins. He made these interesting discoveries through chemistry.
  • James Watson & Frances Crick

    James Watson & Frances Crick
    These scientists discovered the double-helix structure of a DNA molecule. The structure is made up of two long spiral DNA strands, both containing monomer nucleotides.
  • Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl

    Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl
    They discovered the semi-conservative replication of DNA; when each strand of DNA makes a template to create a new complementary strand. He used the E.coli bacteria to make this discovery.
  • Paul Berg

    Paul Berg
    He discovered gene-splicing experiments; when DNA from two organisms combine. These experiments resulted in the first human-made recombinant DNA. Berg used bacteria viruses for his experiments.
  • Frederick Sanger

    Frederick Sanger
    He discovered the plus and minus method for rapid DNA sequencing. DNA was used and synthesized from templates to make sets of DNA molecules. Frederick tested this system by using most of the DNA sequence of bacteriophage X174
  • Kary Mullis

    Kary Mullis
    He discovered the DNA polymerase chain reaction. The technique allows a specific stretch of DNA to be copied billions of times in only a couple of hours. This reaction uses the DNA segment to be copied, two oligonucleotide primers, nucleotides, and the DNA polymerase enzyme. Mullis worked with DNA molecules, bacteria, and viruses.
  • J. Craig Venter

    J. Craig Venter
    He found out a quick technique to identify genes. This technique sequenced flags, DNA segments in expressed genes to identify unknown genes in other organisms or cells. The element was also used to identify thousands of human genes. This way was used to determine the gene responsible for a specific colon cancer.