Monday, July 13, 2015

Genetics

  • 1865
    Gregor Mendel, Austrian botanist, formulates his laws of inheritance after exploration of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants, thus founding the science of genetics
  • February 28, 1953
    Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announce that they have determined the double-helix structure of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, the molecule containing human genes
  • April 25, 1953
    Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish an article describing the double helix structure of DNA
  • 1956
    Soviet Russian biologists Alexander Spirin and Andrey Belozersky predict existence of messenger RNA, a large family of RNA molecules that convey genetic information from DNA to the ribosome
  • 1965
    Werner Arber, a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist, discovers restriction endonucleases, an enzyme that cuts DNA, thus laying foundation for recombinant DNA technology
  • 1973
    American geneticists Stanley Norman Cohen and Herbert Boyer transfer the gene for frog ribosomal RNA into bacterial cells, thus starting genetic engineering
  • September 10, 1984
    Alec Jeffreys, a British geneticist, develops techniques for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling
  • 1990
    Four-year-old Ashanthi DeSilva, who suffers from severe combined immunodeficiency, becomes the first patient to undergo successful gene therapy
  • May 18, 1994
    Food and Drug Administration concludes that Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is safe for food use, making it the first commercially grown genetically engineered food
  • April 14, 2003
    The Human Genome Project, an international scientific research project, is successfully completed, with 99 percent of the human genome sequenced to 99.99 percent accuracy
  • May 7, 2010
    Scientists conducting the Neanderthal genome project announce that they have sequenced enough of the Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred

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