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Humans domesticated crops and livestock
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Biotechnology is first used to leaven bread, ferment beer and wine, produce cheese, Babylonian control date palm breeding by selectively pollinating trees
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moldy soybean curds used to treat boils (China)
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powdered chrysanthemums (China)
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The compound microscope is invented in the Netherlands, English physicist Robert Hooke discovers existence of the cell
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Dutch scientist Antoine van Leeuwenhoek discovers bacteria
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German botanist Joseph Koelreuter reports successful crossbreeding of crop plants in different species.
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English surgeon Edward Jenner pioneers vaccination by inoculating a child with a viral vaccine to protect him from smallpox
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German scientists Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann propose that all organisms are composed of cells, and German pathologist Rudolf Virchow declares, "every cell arises from a cell"
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French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur proposes microbes cause fermentation
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Charles Darwin publishes the theory of evolution by natural selection
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Austrian monk Gregor Mendel studies garden peas and discovers that genetic traits are passed from parents to offspring in a predictable way - the laws of heredity. Mendel's discoveries were largely ignored until the early 20th century.
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Fruit flies are used in the early studies of genes. American agronomist and inventor George Washington Carver seeks new industrial uses for agricultural feed stocks.
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Bacteria are used to treat sewage for the first time in Manchester, England
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bacterial viruses are discovered
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the word biotechnology is first used in print
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Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, German botanist Friedrich Laibach first uses embryo rescue to obtain hybrids from wide crosses in crop plants - known today as hybridization
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U.S. Congress passes the Plant Patent Act, enabling the products of plant breeding to be patented
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developed by Henry Wallace in the 1920s, is commercialized, eliminates the option of saving seeds
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the electron microscope is used to identify and characterize a bacteriophage - a virus that infects bacteria, penicillin is mass-produced in microbes
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Canadian-born American bacteriologist Oswald Avery and colleagues discover that DNA carries genetic information
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the scientific journal Nature publishes James Watson and Francis Crick's manuscript describing the double helical structure of DNA, which marks the beginning of the modern era of genetics
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sickle cell anemia is shown to occur due to a change of a single amino acid, DNA is made in a test tube for the first time
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USDA registers the first biopesticide: Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt
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new wheat varieties developed by American agricultural scientist, Norman Borlaug, increase yields by 70%
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the genetic code is cracked, demonstrating that a sequence of three nucleotide bases (a codon) determines each of 20 amino acids (two more amino acids have since been discovered)
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the first complete synthesis of a gene is completed
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American biochemists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer perfect techniques to cut and paste DNA and reproduce the new DNA in bactera
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a human gene is expressed in bacteria for the first time, procedures are developed for rapidly sequencing long sections of DNA using electrophoresis
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The U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark case Diamond v. Chakrabarty, approves the principle of patenting organisms, which allows the Exxon oil company to patent an oil-eating microorganism
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scientists at Ohio University produce the first transgenic animals by transferring genes from other animal into mice, a Chinese scientist becomes the first to close a fish - a golden carp
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the first biotech drug is approved by FDA: human insulin produced in genetically modified bacteria
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American biochemist Kary Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, uses heat and enzymes to make unlimited copies of genes and gene fragments, later becomes a major tool in biotech research and product development worldwide
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DNA fingerprinting technique (using PCR) is developed, the entire genome of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is cloned and sequenced
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genetic fingerprinting is entered as evidence in a courtroom, the NIH approves guidelines performing gene-therapy experiments in humans
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Chy-Max, an artificially produced form of chymosin enzyme for cheese making, is introduced; the first product of recombinant DNA technology in the U.S. food supply; The Human Genome Project - an international effort to map all the genes in the human body - is launched
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American and British scientists unveil a technique for testing embryos in vitro for genetic abnormalities such as cystic fibrosis and hemophilia; the FDA declares that transgenic foods are "not inherently dangerous" and do not require special regulation
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FDA approves the first whole food produced through biotechnology: FLAVRSAVR tomato, first breast-cancer gene is discovered, Pulmozyme, a recombinant version of human DNase, is approved, the drug breaks down protein accumulation in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients
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Dolly the sheep is unveiled in Scotland and the first animal cloned from an adult cell, biotech crops are growing commercially on nearly 5 million acres worldwide
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a rough draft of the human genome sequence is announced, the first complete map of a plant genome is developed: Arabidopsis thaliana
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the first biotech pet, GloFish, hits the North American market, laboratory-rat and chimpanzee genome is sequenced
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researchers at the University of Georgia successfully produce a cow cloned from the cells of a carcass, scientists at Harvard University report success in converting skin cells into embryonic stem cells through fusion with existing embryonic stem cells
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Taiwanese researchers develop biotech eucalyptus tree that ingests up to three times more carbon dioxide the conventional varieties, U.S. researchers announce the production of biotech cattle that cannot develop prion proteins (connected to Mad Cow Disease)
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the draft corn genome sequence is completed, only the third plant genome to be completed
