DNA/Timelines

1866': Gregor Mendel identifies inheritance "factors" in pea plants.

1869': Friedrich Miescher isolates “nuclein” (DNA) from infected wounds.

1900': Karl Correns, Hugo de Vries and Erich von Tschermak independently rediscover Medel's laws.

1910': Thomas Hunt Morgan Proposed a theory of sex-linked inheritance for the first mutation discovered in the fruit fly, Drosophila, white eye.

1913': Morgan and Alfred Sturtevant at Columbia University Propose the gene theory, including the principle of linkage leading to the first genetic map.

1927': Hermann J. Muller Used x-rays to cause artificial gene mutations in Drosophila.

1928': Frederick Griffith demonstrates a "transforming factor" that can transmit the ability of bacteria to cause pneumonia in mice.

1929': Phoebus Levene describes building blocks of DNA, including four types of base A,C, T, and G.

1931': Harriet B. Creighton Barbara McClintock Demonstrated the cytological proof for crossing-over in maize.

1941': George Beadle Edward Tatum prove that a gene can produce its effect by regulating particular enzymes.

1944': Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty Purified the transforming factor proposed in Griffith's experiment and show it is not protein, but DNA.

Late 1940s': Barbara McClintock developed the hypothesis of transposable elements.

1950': Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase use bacteriophage to confirm DNA is the molecule of heredity.

1950': Erwin Chargaff Discovered a one-to-one ratio of A:T and G:C in DNA samples from a variety of organisms.

1951': Rosalind Franklin Obtained a high quality X-ray diffraction photograph to reveal more detail of the repeating structure of DNA.

1953': Francis Crick James Watson deduce the three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule using a combination of experimental data and model building.

1958': Arthur Kornberg Purified a DNA polymerase from bacteria, and used it to synthesis DNA in a test tube.

1958': Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl demonstrate that DNA replicates by a semi-conservative mechanism.

1966': Marshall Nirenberg and Gobind Khorana crack the genetic code linking the DNA sequence of nucleotides to the protein sequence of amino acid residues.

1967': Discovery of DNA ligase

1969': FISH

1970': Howard Temin discovers the of activity of reverse transcriptase.

1970': Hamilton Smith and Kent Wilcox isolate the first restriction enzyme, HindII, that cuts DNA at a very specific nucleotide sequence. Over the next few years, several more restriction enzymes will be isolated.

1972': Paul Berg creates the first recombinant DNA molecules, using restriction enzymes. This technology will be the beginning of the biotechnology industry.

1973': Annie Chang and Stanley Cohen Showed that a recombinant DNA molecule can be maintained and replicated in E. coli.

1973': Joseph Sambrook refined DNA electrophoresis (first described in 1953) by using agarose gel and staining with ethidium bromide.

1975': An International meeting at Asilomar, California provided guidelines regulating recombinant DNA experimentation.

1975': Ed Southern develops the Southern blot for DNA. This name inspires similar blotting techniques for RNA (northern blot) and protein (western blot). (Milestone 6)

1976': Herbert Boyer cofounds Genentech, the first firm founded in the United States to apply recombinant DNA technology

1977': Frederick Sanger Allan Maxam, and Walter Gilbert Developed the chain termination (dideoxy) method for sequencing DNA.

1978': Somatostatin, which regulates human growth hormones, is the first human protein made using recombinant technology.

1980': Mark Skolnick, Ray White, David Botstein, and Ronald Davis create RFLP marker map of human genome.

1981': Three independent research teams announced the discovery of human oncogenes (cancer genes).

1983': James Gusella demonstrate that the Huntington's disease gene is on chromosome 4.

1985': Kary B. Mullis publishes a paper describing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) a technique to amplify specific DNA sequences from minutes quantities of starting material.

1985': Alec Jeffreys devises a technique that uses DNA polymorphisms to distinguish between different individuals. He later coined the term DNA fingerprinting and this is now impotant for many paternity, immigration, and murder cases.

1986': Leroy Hood and Lloyd Smith automate DNA sequencing with the goal of sequencing whole genomes.

1987': US DOE officially begins human genome project.

1990': BLAST algorithm developed to align DNA sequences and is the key to comparative genomics.

1990': The first occurance of gene replacement therapy to repair a defective ADA gene in a four year old girls T-cells.

1993': FlavrSavr tomatoes are the first genetically modified organisms to be marketed. They were engineered to ripen more slowly for longer shelf life.

1995': Patrick Brown and Stanford University colleagues invent DNA microarray technology.

1995': Researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research publish first genome sequence of free-living organism: Haemophilus influenzae.

1998': NIH begins SNP project to reveal human genetic variation.

1999': First human chromosome sequence published.

2000': Fruit fly genome sequenced using Celera’s whole-genome shotgun method.

2001': Science and Nature publish annotations and analyses of human genome.

2005: HapMap published giving a huge resource of SNP's and information relating to human variation.