History of Biotechnology

1600

Sep 21, 1600

Robert Hooke coined term "cell" and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek ovserved microorganisms through invention of miscroscopes.

1850

Sep 22, 1850

Gregor Mendel, working on pea plants, discovered simple laws of ingeritance of traits that allowed one to predict the outcome of crosses with certain traits.

1857

Sep 22, 1857

Louis Pasteur described the dcientific basis for fermentation, wine making and beer brewing. This created microbiology and proposed the germ theory(microorganisms responsible for infectious diseases)

1869

Sep 22, 1869

Johann Miescher found nucleic acid in white blood cells from pus in bandages. This later led scientists to believe that DNA might be the inheritable material of an organism.

1910

Sep 22, 1910

Studying fruit flies, Thomas Hunt Morhan discovered that genes were on chromosomes.

1928

Sep 22, 1928

Fred Griffith, using mice, proved that genetic material could be moved from one strain of bacteria to another.

1928

Sep 22, 1928

Sir Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin from a fungus. Many of his ideas are used to develop biotechnology drugs today.

1935

Sep 22, 1935

Chargaff showed that in DNA the number of units of adenine equaled those of thymine and the number of units of cytosine equaled thos of guanine

1983

Sep 23, 1938

Schell, Chilton, Van Montagy, Fraley, and Horsch transformed plants with agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer.

1941

Sep 23, 1941

Beadle and Tatum proposed the "one gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis. 1944 Avery, McCarthy, and McLeod established that indeed DNA was the hereditary material.

1953

Sep 23, 1953

Using their famous "blender experiment," Hershey and Chase proved virused replicated using DNA and confirmed the role of DNA as the heriditary material.

1953

Sep 23, 1953

Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins established through x-ray crystallography that DNA was indeed a double helix

1953

Sep 23, 1953

Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA

1953

Sep 23, 1953

Hayes discovered plasmid DNA, circular pieces if DBA found in bacteria.

1961

Sep 23, 1961

Walter Glibert discovered the mechanism of gene expression through his study of messenger RNA.

1962

Sep 23, 1962

Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restriction enzymes that cut DNA

1966

Sep 23, 1966

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.

1967

Sep 23, 1967

DNA plasmids were isolated and purified by Vinograd

1970

Sep 23, 1970

Madel and Higa were respinsible for the first tandformation of the bacterium Escherichia coli.

1972

Sep 23, 1972

Cloning experiments were conducted by Boyer and Cohen.

1973

Sep 23, 1973

Genentech, the world's first genetic engineering company, was founded

1976

Sep 23, 1976

140 scientists met to draw up guidelines for work with recominant DNA in microorganisms. Paul Berg was a key organizer.

1977

Sep 23, 1977

Sander 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 adrenaline, cytosine, guanine and thymine.

1978

Sep 23, 1978

Boyer inserted a synthetic inculin into the E. coli.

1978

Sep 23, 1978

Bostein found that one could be identified by the pattern made on one's DNA through a digest by different enzymes. This DNA fingerprint was called a Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism.

1978

Sep 23, 1978

Loise Joy Brown was born, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilization, in which sperm and egg are joined in a petrie dish. The fertilized egg is later implanted into a womb.

1980

Sep 23, 1980

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically altered life forms can be patented. This resulted in a huge startup of biotech companies.

1980

Sep 23, 1980

Ohio University scientists made the first transgenic animals

1982

Sep 23, 1982

Eli Lilly Company placed a human unsulin gene inside bacteria.

1983

Sep 23, 1983

Kary Mullis invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) ti amplify DNA in the labratory.

1985

Sep 23, 1985

Jeffries applied RFLP in DNA profiling to the study of criminal cases.

1985

Sep 23, 1985

An automated fluorescence sequencer was invented, speeding up the labor-intense process

1985

Sep 23, 1985

Genes were moved into an organism through the use of a gene gun.

1994

Sep 23, 1994

NIH revised safety guidelines for recombinant DNA to include plants grown in greenhouses and animals raised in barns.

1996

Sep 23, 1996

Andrew Fire and Craig Mello discovered RNA interference, silencing of genes, in the worm C.elegans.

1997

Sep 23, 1997

Kohler, Milstein, and Jerne used monoclonal antibody (MAb) technology.

1997

Sep 23, 1997

Maynard Olson and colleagues at Washington University invented "yeast artificial chromosomes" or YACs, which are expression vectors for large proteins.

1997

Sep 23, 1997

Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly the sheep from an adult cell of a ewe at the Roslin Institute in Scotland.

1997

Sep 23, 1997

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

1999

Sep 23, 1999

Dabiri and Garner invented an automated DNA sequencer that had a capability of sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour, 5 t o30 times fster than existing sequencers. Technology like this greatly sped up the Human Genome Project.

2002

Sep 23, 2002

Rob Breaker coined the term riboswitch for part of an mRNA molecule that can regulate its own acticity and therefore gene expression

2003

Sep 23, 2003

Announcement was made of the completion of the Human Genome Project (initiated in 1990) by Francis Collins and Craig Ventor. The project provided the ability to find genes and gave rise to the sequencing of other genomes.