TIME LINE FOR GENETICS
Year
Scientist(s)
revised s06
Discovery
1858
Charles Darwin
Alfred Russel Wallace
Joint announcement of theory of natural selection. 1859 Darwin
publishes The Origin of Species
1866
Gregor Mendel
Published the results of his investigations of the inheritance of
"factors" in pea plants.
1869
Miescher
Discovery of nuclein from nuclei of white blood cells in pus
1882
Walter Fleming
Stains cells and observes (and coins the term) chromosomes
1900
Hugo, deVries, Erich von
Tschermak
Mendel's principles were independently discovered and verified,
marking the beginning of modern genetics.
1902
Walter Sutton
Pointed out the interrelationships between cytology and Mendelism,
closing the gap between cell morphology and heredity.
1905
Nettie Stevens, Edmund
Wilson
Independently described behavior of sex chromosomes-XX
determines female; XY determines male.
1908
Archibald Garrod
Proposed that some human diseases are due to "inborn errors of
metabolism" that result from the lack of a specific enzyme.
1908
Hardy and Weinberg
Studied genotypic frequencies in populations
1909
Wilhelm Johannsen
Coins the terms "gene", "genotype" and "phenotype"
1910
Thomas Hunt Morgan*
Proposed theory of sex-linked inheritance for the first mutation
discovered in Drosophila, white eye. Principle of linkage.
1913
Sturtevant and Morgan
First linkage map, Drosophila
1927
Hermann J. Muller*
Used x-rays to cause artificial gene mutations in Drosophila.
1928
Fred Griffith
Proposed that some unknown "principle" had transformed the
harmless R strain of Diplococcus to the virulent S strain.
1931
Harriet B. Creighton
Barbara McClintock*
Demonstrated the cytological proof for crossing-over in maize.
1941
George Beadle*
Edward Tatum*
Irradiated the red bread mold, Neurospora, and proved that the gene
produces its effect by regulating particular enzymes. One gene/one
enzyme.
1944
Oswald Avery
Colin MacLeod
Maclyn McCarty
Reported that they had purified the transforming principle in
Griffith's experiment and that it was DNA.
1945
Max Delbruck
Course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Training ground of first
two generations of molecular biologists
late
1940s
Barbara McClintock
Developed the hypothesis of transposable elements to explain color
variations in corn.
1949
Linus Pauling
Demonstrates that sickle cell disease is a molecular disease
resulting from a mutation in a protein
1950
Erwin Chargaff
Discovered a one-to-one ratio of adenine to thymine and guanine to
cytosine in DNA samples from a variety of organisms.
1951
Rosalind Franklin
Obtained sharp X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA.
1952
Martha Chase
Used phages the final proof that DNA is the molecule of heredity.
Alfred Hershey
1953
Francis Crick*
James Watson*
Solved three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule. Nobel
Prize 1962
1958
Matthew Meselson
Frank Stahl
Used isotopes of nitrogen to prove the semiconservative replication
of DNA.
1958
Arthur Kornberg*
Purified DNA polymerase I from E. coli
1961
Sydney Brenner, Francois
Jacob*, Matthew Meselson
Identify the role of mRNA as messenger that genetic information
from DNA to ribosomes
1966
Marshall Nirenberg*
H. Gobind Khorana*
Cracked genetic code- triplet mRNA codons specify each of the
twenty amino acids.
1970
Hamilton Smith*
Kent Wilcox
Isolated the first restriction enzyme, HindII, that could cut DNA
molecules within specific recognition sites.
1972
Paul Berg, Herb Boyer
Produced the first recombinant DNA molecules.
1975
Fred Sanger*
Developed the chain termination method for sequencing DNA.
1977
Genentech
Human growth hormone made by recombinant DNA
1978
David Botstein
RFLPs, valuable genetic markers in human genetic studies
1981
James Gusella
Used blood samples collected by Nancy Wexler and her co-workers
to demonstrate that Huntington's disease gene is on chromosome 4.
1983
Kary B. Mullis*
Published a paper describing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR),
the most sensitive assay for DNA yet devised.
1988
Alec Jeffreys
Coined the term DNA fingerprinting and was the first to use DNA
polymorphisms in paternity, immigration, and murder cases.
National Center for Human Genome Research created. $3 billion
dollar effort to sequence human genome. 1990 Project launched
1989
1989
Francis Collins
Lap-Chee Tsui
Gene for cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator,
chromosome 7 that, when mutant, causes cystic fibrosis.
1989
French Anderson and others
First gene replacement therapy-T cells of a child were exposed to
retroviruses containing an RNA copy of a normal ADA gene.
1990
Richard Roberts, Philip
Sharp
Nobel Prize for their discovery of split genes
1993
Genomic Research Co.
Sequences first bacterium Haemophilus influenzae
1995
International collaboration
First eukaryote, S. cerevisiae is sequenced
1996
Ian Wilmut
Clones a sheep via nuclear transfer
Craig Venter, Francis
Collins and MANY others
* Nobel Prize
2000
Completion of the human genome sequencing (draft) effort
indicating 30,000 genes. We are now in the Post Genomic Era