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Robert Hooke coined the term "Cells" and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek observed the first microorganisms because of the invention of the microscope
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Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, worked with pea plants to discover the simple laws of inheritance of traits that allowed one to predict the outcome of crosses with certain traits.
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Louis Pasteur described the scientific basis for fermentation, wine making, and the brewing of beer, established the science of microbiology, and proposed the Germ Theory that claimed that microorganisms were responsible for infectious diseases.
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Johann Miescher found nucleic acid in white blood cells from pus in bandages. This later led scientists to believe that DNA might be the inheritable material of an organism.
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Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered that genes were on chromosomes by studying fruit flies.
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Fred Griffith proved that genetic material could be moved from one strain of bacteria to another by using mice.
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Sir Alexander Fleming isolated penicillin from a fungus, many of his ideas being used to develope biotechnology drugs today.
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Chargaff showed that in DNA the number of units of adenine equaled those of thymine and the number of units of cytosine equaled those of guanine.
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Beadle and Tatum proposed the "One gene produces one enzyme" hypothesis
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Averym McCarty, and McLeod established that DNA was the hereditary material that was transferred.
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Hershey and Chase used their "Blender experiment" to prove viruses replicated using DNA and confirmed the role of DNA as the hereditary material
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Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins established that DNA was indeed a double helix through S-ray crystallography.
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Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.
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Hayes discovered circular pieces of DNA found in bacteria called plasmid DNA.
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Walter Gilbert discovered the mechanism of gene expression through his study of messenger RNA.
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Arber, Nathans, and Smith discovered bacterial restriction enzymes that cut DNA.
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Khorana and Nirenberg discovered the 64 condons, or the triplet code of 3 bases in DNA, that code for the 20 amino acids making up proteins.
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DNA plasmids were isolated and purified by Vinograd.
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Madel and Higa were responsible for the first transformation of the bacterium Escherichia coli
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Cloning experiments were conducted by Boyer and Cohen.
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The world's first genetic engineering company, Genentech, was founded
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140 scientists met to draw up guidelines for work with recombinant DNA in microorganisms, Paul Berg was a key organizer.
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Sanger and Gilbert found a way to sequence DNA, given an unknown piece of DNA, gthey were able to read the correct order of bases of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.
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Boyer inserted a synthetic insulin gene into E. coli.
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Botstein found that one could be identified by the pattern made of one's DNA through a digest by different enzymes, this DNA fingerprint was called a Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically altered life forms can be patented, this resuted in a huge startup of biotech companies.
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Ohio University scientist made the first transgenic animals.
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Eli Lilly Company placed a human insulin gene inside bacteria.
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Schell, Chilton, Van Montagu, Fraley, and Horsch transformed plants with Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer.
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Kary Mullis invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA in the laboratory.
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Jeffries applied RFLP in DNA profiling to the study of criminal cases.
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Genes were moved into an organism through the use of a gene gun.
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An automated fluorescence sequencer was invented, speeding up the labor-intense process.
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NIH revised safety guidelines for recombinant DNA to include plants grown in greenhouses and animals raised in barns.
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Andrew Fire and Craig Mello discovered RNA interference, silencing of genes, in the worm C. elegans.
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Louise Joy Brown, the first human baby resulting from in vitro fertilization where sperm and egg are joined in a petri dish and when the egg is fertilized, implanted in a womb, was born.
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Kohler, Milstein, and Jerne used monoclonal antibody technology.
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Maunard Olson and colleagues at Washington University invented "yeast artificial chromosomes," or YACs, which are expression vectors for large proteins.
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Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly the sheep from an adult cell of a ewe at the Roslin Institute in Scotland
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DNA microarray(DNA chip) techmology, looking at the expression of all the genes of an organism at one time on a microscope slide or silicon chip, was developed.
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Dabiri and Garner invented an automated DNA sequencer that had a capability of sequencing 76,800 base pairs per hour, 5 to 30 times faster than existing sequencers. Technology like this greatly sped up the Human Genome Project.
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Announcement was made of the completion of the Human Genome Project initiated in 1990 by Francis Collins and Craig Venter. The project provided the ability to find genes and gave rise to the sequencin gof other genomes.
