The history of genetics can be represented on a timeline of events from the earliest work in the 1850s, to the DNA era starting in the 1940s, and the genomics era beginning in the 1970s.
1889: Richard Altmann purified protein free DNA. However, the nucleic acid was not as pure as he had assumed. It was determined later to contain a large amount of protein.
1889: Hugo de Vries postulates that "inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles", naming such particles "(pan)genes".[2]
1902: Archibald Garrod discovered inborn errors of metabolism. An explanation for epistasis is an important manifestation of Garrod's research, albeit indirectly. When Garrod studied alkaptonuria, a disorder that makes urine quickly turn black due to the presence of gentisate, he noticed that it was prevalent among populations whose parents were closely related.[3][4][5]
1903:
embryonic development to take place. Sutton's work with grasshoppers showed that chromosomes occur in matched pairs of maternal and paternal chromosomes which separate during meiosis.[7] He concluded that this could be "the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity."[8]
which describes the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population, which are under certain specific conditions, as constant and at a state of equilibrium from generation to generation unless specific disturbing influences are introduced.
1910: Thomas Hunt Morgan shows that genes reside on chromosomes while determining the nature of sex-linked traits by studying Drosophila melanogaster. He determined that the white-eyed mutant was sex-linked based on Mendelian's principles of segregation and independent assortment.[13]
1911: Alfred Sturtevant, one of Morgan's collaborators, invented the procedure of linkage mapping which is based on the frequency of crossing-over.[14]
1920: Lysenkoism Started, during Lysenkoism they stated that the hereditary factor are not only in the nucleus, but also in the cytoplasm, though they called it living protoplasm.[16]
1930s–1950s: Joachim Hämmerling conducted experiments with Acetabularia in which he began to distinguish the contributions of the nucleus and the cytoplasm substances (later discovered to be DNA and mRNA, respectively) to cell morphogenesis and development.[18][19]
1931: Crossing over is identified as the cause of recombination; the first cytological demonstration of this crossing over was performed by Barbara McClintock and Harriet Creighton.
1933: Jean Brachet, while studying virgin sea urchin eggs, suggested that DNA is found in cell nucleus and that RNA is present exclusively in the cytoplasm. At the time, "yeast nucleic acid" (RNA) was thought to occur only in plants, while "thymus nucleic acid" (DNA) only in animals. The latter was thought to be a tetramer, with the function of buffering cellular pH.[20][21]
1933:
linkage mapping. His work elucidated the role played by the chromosome in heredity. Morgan voluntarily shared the prize money with his key collaborators, Calvin Bridges and Alfred Sturtevant
.
1941:
central dogma of genetics
.
1943: Luria–Delbrück experiment: this experiment showed that genetic mutations conferring resistance to bacteriophage arise in the absence of selection, rather than being a response to selection.[23]
1947: Salvador Luria discovers reactivation of irradiated phage,[25] stimulating numerous further studies of DNA repair processes in bacteriophage,[26] and other organisms, including humans.
purines (cytosine and thymine) are also always the same. Lastly, Chargaff and his team found the proportion of pyrimidines and purines correspond each other.[27][28]
1955: Joe Hin Tjio, while working in Albert Levan's lab, determined the number of chromosomes in humans to be of 46. Tjio was attempting to refine an established technique to separate chromosomes onto glass slides by conducting a study of human embryonic lung tissue, when he saw that there were 46 chromosomes rather than 48. This revolutionized the world of cytogenetics.[33]
1957: Arthur Kornberg with Severo Ochoa synthesized DNA in a test tube after discovering the means by which DNA is duplicated. DNA polymerase 1 established requirements for in vitro synthesis of DNA. Kornberg and Ochoa were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959 for this work.[34][35][36]
1957/1958:
messenger RNA nucleotide sequence and a polypeptide sequence. In the experiment, they purified tRNAs from yeast cells and were awarded the Nobel prize in 1968.[37]
1960: Jacob and collaborators discover the operon, a group of genes whose expression is coordinated by an operator.[39][40]
1961:
Proflavin causes mutations by inserting itself between DNA bases, typically resulting in insertion or deletion of a single base pair. The mutants could not produce functional rIIB protein.[41] These mutations were used to demonstrate that three sequential bases of the rIIB gene's DNA specify each successive amino acid of the encoded protein. Thus the genetic code
is a triplet code, where each triplet (called a codon) specifies a particular amino acid.
Marshall W. Nirenberg, Philip Leder, Har Gobind Khorana cracked the genetic code by using RNA homopolymer and heteropolymer experiments, through which they figured out which triplets of RNA were translated into what amino acids in yeast cells.[43]
1969: Molecular hybridization of radioactive DNA to the DNA of cytological preparation by Pardue, M. L. and Gall, J. G.
In the late 1970s: nonisotopic methods of nucleic acid labeling were developed. The subsequent improvements in the detection of reporter molecules using immunocytochemistry and immunofluorescence, in conjunction with advances in fluorescence microscopy and image analysis, have made the technique safer, faster and reliable.
1980: Paul Berg, Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger developed methods of mapping the structure of DNA. In 1972, recombinant DNA molecules were produced in Paul Berg's Stanford University laboratory. Berg was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for constructing recombinant DNA molecules that contained phage lambda genes inserted into the small circular DNA mol.[52]
1980:
HGH, Erythropoietin and Insulin. The patent earned about $300 million in licensing royalties for Stanford.[53]
transposons were widely observed in corn, although her ideas weren't widely granted attention until the 1960s and 1970s when the same phenomenon was discovered in bacteria and Drosophila melanogaster.[56]
Restriction endonuclease and then the fragments are separated by electrophoresis producing a template distinct to each individual banding pattern of the gel.[58]
1986: Jeremy Nathans found genes for color vision and color blindness, working with David Hogness, Douglas Vollrath and Ron Davis as they were studying the complexity of the retina.[59]
1987: Yoshizumi Ishino discovers and describes part of a DNA sequence which later will be called CRISPR.
1989: Thomas Cech discovered that RNA can catalyze chemical reactions,[60] making for one of the most important breakthroughs in molecular genetics, because it elucidates the true function of poorly understood segments of DNA.
1994: The first breast cancer gene is discovered. BRCA I was discovered by researchers at the King laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1990 but was first cloned in 1994. BRCA II, the second key gene in the manifestation of breast cancer was discovered later in 1994 by Professor Michael Stratton and Dr. Richard Wooster.
1995: The genome of bacterium Haemophilus influenzae is the first genome of a free living organism to be sequenced.[63]
2001: First draft sequences of the human genome are released simultaneously by the
Celera Genomics
.
2001: Francisco Mojica and Rudd Jansen propose the acronym CRISPR to describe a family of bacterial DNA sequences that can be used to specifically change genes within organisms.
2003: Paul Hebert introduces the standardisation of molecular species identification and coins the term 'DNA Barcoding',[68] proposing Cytochrome Oxidase 1 (CO1) as the DNA Barcode for Animals.[69]
2004:
Human Papillomavirus which promised to protect women against infection with HPV 16 and 18, which inactivates tumor suppressor genes
and together cause 70% of cervical cancers.
2007: Michael Worobey traced the evolutionary origins of HIV by analyzing its genetic mutations, which revealed that HIV infections had occurred in the United States as early as the 1960s.
2011: Fungal Barcoding Consortium propose Internal Transcribed Spacer region (ITS) as the Universal DNA Barcode for Fungi.[72]
2012: The flora of Wales is completely barcoded, and reference specimens stored in the BOLD systems database, by the National Botanic Garden of Wales.[73]
2016: A genome is sequenced in
Kate Rubins using a MinION device aboard the International Space Station.[74]
^Bateson, William (1907). "The Progress of Genetic Research". In Wilks, W. (ed.). Report of the Third 1906 International Conference on Genetics: Hybridization (the cross-breeding of genera or species), the cross-breeding of varieties, and general plant breeding. London: Royal Horticultural Society. Although the conference was titled "International Conference on Hybridisation and Plant Breeding", Wilks changed the title for publication as a result of Bateson's speech.
^Johannsen, Wilhelm (1909). Elemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre [Elements of the exact theory of heredity] (in German). Jena, Germany: Gustav Fischer. p. 123. Johannsen distinguished between an organism's outward appearance (which he designated as its "phenotype") and its inherent genetic heritage (which he designated as its "genotype"). He stressed that an organism's appearance need not correspond exactly to its genetic heritage. So on p. 123 he defines "phenotype": "Darum könnte man den statistisch hervortretenden Typus passend als Erscheinungstypus bezeichnen oder, kurz und klar, als "Phaenotypus". 1) … Ein gebener Phaenotypus mag Ausdruck einer biologischen Einheit sein; er braucht es aber durchaus nicht zu sein. 1) Von φαίν-ομαι, scheinen." (Therefore one could designate the statistically prominent type appropriately as a type of appearance or, clearly and concisely, as a "phenotype". 1) … A given phenotype may be an expression of a biological unit; but it definitely need not be so. 1) From φαίν-ομαι, to appear.)
^Principles of Genetics / D. Peter Snustad, Michael J. Simmons – 5th Ed. p.99
^Principles of Genetics / D. Peter Snustad, Michael J. Simmons – 5th Ed. pp.147
^Principles of Genetics / D. Peter Snustad, Michael J. Simmons – 5th Ed. pp.109
^Brachet, J. (1933). Recherches sur la synthese de l'acide thymonucleique pendant le developpement de l'oeuf d'Oursin. Archives de Biologie 44* 519–576.
^Burian, R. (1994). Jean Brachet's Cytochemical Embryology: Connections with the Renovation of Biology in France? In: Debru, C., Gayon, J. and Picard, J.-F. (eds.). Les sciences biologiques et médicales en France 1920–1950, vol. 2 of Cahiers pour I'histoire de la recherche. Paris: CNRS Editions, pp. 207–220. link.
