History of Biotechnology

Microoganisms and cells

May 3, 1600

Robert Hooke founded cells and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek observed the first microorganisms through microscopes.

Laws of Inheritance

Jan 24, 1857

Gregor Mandel discovered the simple laws of inheritance of traits that allowed one to predict the outcome of crossses with certian traits.

Johann Miescher

Mar 6, 1869

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

DNA

Sep 21, 1910

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

Genetic Material

Sep 21, 1928

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

Chargaff

Sep 21, 1935

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

One gene produces one enzyme

Sep 21, 1941

Beadle and Tatum proposed the "one gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis.

Establishment

Sep 21, 1944

Avery, McCarty, and McLeod established that indeed DNA was the hereditay material that was transferred.

Hereditary Material

Sep 21, 1953

Using thier famouss "blender experiment," Hershey and Chase proved viruses replicater using DNA and confirmed the role of DNA as the hereditary material.

Structure of DNA

Sep 22, 1953

Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.

plasmid DNA

Sep 22, 1961

Walter Gilbert discovered the mechanism or gene expression through his study of messenger RNA

bacterial enzymes

Sep 22, 1962

Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restirction enzymes that cut DNA.

discovery of cohons

Sep 22, 1966

Khorana and Nirenberg discovered the 64 codons (triplet code of 3 bases in DNA) that code for the 20 amino acids making up protiens.

Plasmids

Sep 22, 1967

DNA plasmids were isolated and purified by Vinograd.

Escherichia coli

Sep 22, 1970

Madel and Higa were responsible for the first transformation of the bacterium Escherichia coli.

Cloning

Sep 22, 1972

Cloning experiments were conducted by Boyer and Chen.

Genentech

Sep 22, 1973

Genentech, the wrold's first engineering company, was founded.

Guidelines

Sep 22, 1976

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

Read DNA

Sep 23, 1977

Sanger and Gilbert found a way to sequence DNA. Given an unknown piece of DNA, they were able to read the correct orrder of bases of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.

Synthetic insert

Sep 22, 1978

boyer inserted a sunthetic insulin gene into E. coli.

RFLP

Sep 22, 1978

Botstein found that one could be identified by the pettern made of one's DNA through a digest by different enzymes. This DNA fingerprint was called a Restriction Fradment Length Polymorphism (RFLP).

Vitro Fertilization

Sep 22, 1978

Louise Joy Brown was born, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilization, in which spern and egg are joined in a petri dish. The egg is later implanted in a womb.

Huge biotech start up

Sep 22, 1980

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

First Transgenic Animals

Sep 22, 1980

Ohio Univercity scientists made the first transgentic animals.

Human insulin gene

Sep 22, 1982

Eli Lilly Company placed a human insulin gene inside bacteria.

Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer

Sep 22, 1983

Schell, Chilton, Van Montagu, Fraley, and Horsch transformed plants with Agrobacterium-meciated gene transfer.

PCR

Sep 23, 1983

Kary Mullis invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA in the laboratory.

RFLP in DNA

Sep 22, 1985

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

automated fluorescence sequencer

Sep 23, 1985

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

Gene gun

Sep 23, 1985

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

Greenhouses

Sep 22, 1994

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

C.elegans

Sep 22, 1996

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

MAb

Sep 22, 1997

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

YACs

Sep 23, 1997

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

Dolly

Sep 23, 1997

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

DNA chip

Sep 23, 1997

DNA microarray (DNA chip) techology, looking at the expression of all the genes of an organism at one time on a microscope slide or silicon chip, was develped.

Automated DNA sequencer

Sep 23, 1999

Dabiri and Garner invented an automated DNA sequencer that had a capability or sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour, 5 to 30 times faster than exsting sequencers. Technology like this greatly sped up the human genome project.

riboswitch

Sep 23, 2002

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

Project complete

Sep 23, 2003

announcement was made of the completion of the human genome project (initiated in 1990) by Francis Colllins and Craig Venter. the prject provided the ability to find genes adn gave rise to the sequencing of other genomes.