Landmark Discoveries in Biotechnology Time Line

Microscope is invented By Zacharias Janssen, a Dutch spectacle maker

Cells are first described by Robert Hooke

Antony van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch clockmaker, discovers bacteria

British scientist Edward Jenner inoculates a child with a cowpox to protect him from smallpox, hence the birth of the smallpox vaccine

Karl Friedrich Burdach coins the term “biology” to denote the study of human morphology, physiology, and psychology

Anselme Payen and Jean-François Persoz isolate diastase (amylase) in powder form from barley malt and postulate the central importance of enzymes in biology

Gerardus Johannes Mulder coins the term “protein”

Louis Pasteur discovers microbial fermentation

Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacterium is discovered; this becomes the workhorse for modern-day genetic engineering

Gregor Mendel discovers hereditary traits, which are later termed “genes”

Ernst Felix Emmanuel Hoppe-Seyler performs the first crystallization of a protein, hemoglobin

Ernst Heinrich Hackel hypothesizes that the nucleus of a cell transmits its hereditary information

Johann Friedrich Miescher isolates a substance from the nuclei of white blood cells that he calls “nuclein,” which comes to be known as nucleic acid or DNA

Eduard Strasburger accurately describes the processes of mitotic cell division

Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne proposes the term “enzyme” (meaning “in yeast”) and distinguishes enzymes from the microorganisms that produce them

Carl de Laval invents the first centrifuge

Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger, Edouard van Beneden, and others elucidate the essential facts of cell division and stress the importance of the qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells

Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried Waldeyer names the chromosome

Emil Adolf von Behring discovers antibodies

Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski discovers virus, a disease-causing agent smaller than bacteria

Wilhelm Ostwald proves that enzymes are catalysts

John Jacob Abel and Albert C. Crawford isolate the first hormone, later named epinephrine by Jokichl Takamine

Hugo de Vries (Holland), Carl Correns (Germany), and Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg (Austria) claim to have independently discovered and verified Gregor Mendel’s principles, marking the beginning of modern genetics

Emil Fischer and Franz Hofmeister demonstrate that proteins are polypeptides

Carl Neuberg first uses the term “biochemistry”

C.W. Woodworth and William Ernest Castle introduce Drosophila as a new experimental material for genetic studies

Mikhail Semenovitch Tsvett first uses the technique of chromatography while separating plant pigments, hence its name

Archibald Edward Garrod recognizes that gene products are proteins

The first cancer-causing virus is discovered by Francis Peyton Rous

Alexis Carrel develops the technique of in vitro tissue culture

Sir William Henry Bragg and Sir William Lawrence Bragg develop the X-ray crystallography technique, which will later be used in the elucidation of the 3-D structures of proteins and nucleic acids

Alfred Henry Sturtevant develops the first genetic map by using crossover frequencies as measurements of relative distances

Bacteria are used to treat sewage for the first time in Manchester, England

Frederick Twort discovers a virus capable of infecting and destroying bacteria

Félix Hubert d’Hérelle, independently of Frederick Twort, discovers a virus capable of infecting and destroying bacteria, which he calls a bacteriophage

The human growth hormone is discovered by Evans and Long

Theodor Svedberg invents the ultracentrifuge and uses it to determine the sedimentation rates of proteins

Sir Alexander Fleming discovers the antibacterial action of penicillin

Max Knoll and Ernst August Friedrich Ruska build the first electron microscope

George William Marshall Findlay and F.O. MacCullum discover interferon

The term “molecular biology” is coined

Selman Abraham Waksman coins the term “antibiotic” to describe compounds produced by microorganisms that kill bacteria

The term “genetic engineering” is first used by Danish microbiologist A. Jost in a lecture on sexual reproduction in yeast at the Technical Institute in Lwow, Poland

Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty demonstrate that bacterial transformation is caused by DNA

Brand reports the first complete amino acid analysis of a protein, beta-lactoglobulin, by chemical and microbiological methods

First example of genetic recombination is recorded, by combining genetic material from different viruses to form a new type of virus

Barbara McClintock discovers transposable elements or “jumping genes” in corn

Benjamin Minge Duggar discovers aureomicin, the first tetracycline antibiotic

Linus Carl Pauling shows that sickle-cell hemoglobin shows different electrophoretic properties than normal hemoglobin; this demonstrates that genetic mutations lead to specific chemical changes in protein molecules

Artificial insemination of livestock using frozen semen is successfully accomplished

Alfred Day Hershey and Martha Chase prove, on the basis of their bacteriophage research, that DNA alone carries genetic information

James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick accurately describe the molecular structure of DNA

Vincent du Vigneaud carries out the first laboratory synthesis of the peptide hormones oxytocin and vasopressin

Severo Ochoa and M. Grunberg-Manago discover polynucleotide phosphorylase and successfully synthesize RNA

Joe-Hin Tjio and Johan Albert Levan revise Walther Flemming’s 1898 estimate of the human chromosome count from 24 pairs to 23

Arthur Kornberg discovers DNA polymerase I, which leads to the understanding of DNA replication

Vernon Martin Ingram shows that normal and sickle-cell hemoglobin differ in a single amino acid residue in one of the chains

Mahlon Bush Hoagland, Paul Charles Zamecnik, and M.L. Stephenson isolate transfer RNA and postulate its function

Francis Harry Compton Crick enunciates the central dogma of molecular genetics, i.e., information flows from DNA to RNA to protein

François Jacob and Jacques Lucien Monod postulate the function of messenger RNA

Genes conveying resistance to antibiotics in bacteria are found to reside on supersmall chromosomes called plasmids

The genetic code is deciphered, thus demonstrating that a sequence of three nucleotide bases consisting of a codon determines each of 20 amino acids

An enzyme is synthesized in vitro for the first time

The first complete synthesis of a gene is accomplished

Howard Martin Temin and David Baltimore independently discover retroviruses—RNA viruses capable of reverse transcription, i.e., the synthesis of DNA from an RNA template

The first restriction enzyme is isolated

The first recombinant DNA molecules are constructed using restriction enzymes and DNA ligase

The DNA composition of humans is discovered to be 99% similar to that of chimpanzees and gorillas

Stanley Norman Cohen and Herbert Wayne Boyer demonstrate that restriction enzymes can be used to transfer genes from one species to another; recombinant DNA plasmids are successfully implanted in E. coli cells, thus demonstrating the possibility of cloning foreign genes in bacterial cells

An international conference convenes in Asilomar, CA, urging strict guidelines to regulate recombinant DNA research

The first monoclonal antibodies are produced

Genentech (South San Francisco, CA), the first genetic engineering company, is founded to use recombinant DNA methods to produce medically important drugs

The first recombinant DNA molecules incorporating mammalian DNA are produced in bacteria

Split genes are discovered by Phillip A. Sharp and Richard J. Roberts

Procedures are developed for rapidly sequencing long sections of DNA

Smallpox is eradicated worldwide

Somatostatin is produced using recombinant DNA methods

Human growth hormone is first synthesized

The U.S. Supreme Court approves the principle of patenting genetically engineered life forms

Sickle-cell anemia becomes the first genetic illness to be diagnosed directly at the gene level, by restriction enzyme analysis of the DNA

The first transgenic animal, a mouse, is produced

An entirely new syndrome, characterized by severe impairment of the immune system, is recognized and given the name acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)

The first genetically engineered protein, Humulin® (EIi Lilly and Co., Indianapolis, IN), is approved for the treatment of diabetes

The complete 48,502-base pair sequence of the DNA of bacteriophage lambda is published

Kary B. Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for rapidly and easily cloning DNA fragments

The first genetic transformation of plant cells by TI plasmids is performed

The first artificial chromosome is synthesized

The entire genome of the HIV virus is cloned and sequenced

Genetic fingerprinting is introduced into U.S. courtrooms

Genetically engineered plants resistant to insects, viruses, and bacteria are field-tested for the first time

The first outdoor field test of a genetically altered bacterium that inhibits frost formation on crop plants is performed on strawberry and potato plants in California

Congress approves the funding of the Human Genome Project

The gene responsible for cystic fibrosis is discovered

An international effort to map all of the genes in the human body is launched under the sponsorship of the Human Genome Project

The first federally approved experimental gene therapy treatment in a human subject is successfully performed

The first transgenic dairy cow is created

The first breast cancer gene is discovered

The first baboon-to-human bone marrow transplant is performed on an AIDS patient

A gene associated with Parkinson’s disease is discovered

Cloning of an animal, a sheep, is reported by Scottish scientists

Sequencing of the genome of an animal, C. elegans, is completed

First in-vitro culturing of human embryonic stem cells is achieved

Sequencing of Drosophila genome is completed

Cloned pigs are produced from adult pig cells

The first draft of the entire human genome sequence is completed

Scientists at Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD) and the Human Genome Project (Germantown, MD) estimate that the human genome contains about 30,000 protein-coding genes