Lane, Jo Ann.

Access Excellence @ the national health museum , 1994,

www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEPC/WWC/1994/geneticstln.html .

History of Genetics Timeline

Jo Ann Lane
1994 Woodrow Wilson Collection

As scientists sought to understand more about the nature of inheritance of traits, hereditary
processes were explained in ever increasing detail beginning at the populational level and
going toward the molecular level. Keeping this fact in mind will help in understanding the
timeline which follows.

Year Scientist(s) Discovery

Charles Darwin Joint announcement of the theory of natural selection-that
1858 Alfred Russel members of a population who are better adapted to the
Wallace environment survive and pass on their traits.
1859 Charles Darwin Published The Origin of Species.
Published the results of his investigations of the inheritance
1866 Gregor Mendel
of "factors" in pea plants.
Carl Correns Hugo
Mendel's principles were independently discovered and
1900 de Vries Erich von
verified, marking the beginning of modern genetics.
Tschermak
Pointed out the interrelationships between cytology and
1902 Walter Sutton Mendelism, closing the gap between cell morphology and
heredity.
Nettie Stevens Independently described the behavior of sex chromosomes-
1905
Edmund Wilson XX determines female; XY determines male.
Proposed that some human diseases are due to "inborn errors
1908 Archibald Garrod
of metabolism" that result from the lack of a specific enzyme.
Proposed a theory of sex-linked inheritance for the first
Thomas Hunt mutation discovered in the fruit fly, Drosophila, white eye.
1910
Morgan This was followed by the gene theory, including the principle
of linkage.
1927 Hermann J. Muller Used x-rays to cause artificial gene mutations in Drosophila.
Proposed that some unknown "principle" had transformed the
1928 Fred Griffith
harmless R strain of Diplococcus to the virulent S strain.
Harriet B.
Demonstrated the cytological proof for crossing-over in
1931 Creighton
maize.
Barbara McClintock
 George Beadle Irradiated the red bread mold, Neurospora, and proved that
1941
Edward Tatum the gene produces its effect by regulating particular enzymes.
Oswald Avery
Reported that they had purified the transforming principle in
1944 Colin MacLeod
Griffith's experiment and that it was DNA.
Maclyn McCarty
Organized a phage course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
which was taught for 26 consecutive years. This course was
1945 Max Delbruck
the training ground of the first two generations of molecular
biologists
late Developed the hypothesis of transposable elements to explain
Barbara McClintock
1940s color variations in corn.
Discovered a one-to-one ratio of adenine to thymine and
1950 Erwin Chargaff guanine to cytosine in DNA samples from a variety of
organisms.
1951 Rosalind Franklin Obtained sharp X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA.
Used phages in which the protein was labeled with 35S and
Martha Chase
1952 the DNA with 32P for the final proof that DNA is the
Alfred Hershey
molecule of heredity.
Francis Crick
1953 Solved the three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule.
James Watson
Matthew Meselson Used isotopes of nitrogen to prove the semiconservative
1958
Frank Stahl replication of DNA.
Purified DNA polymerase I from E. coli, the first enzyme
1958 Arthur Kornberg
that made DNA in a test tube.
Marshall Nirenberg Led teams that cracked the genetic code- that triplet mRNA
1966
H. Gobind Khorana codons specify each of the twenty amino acids.
Hamilton Smith Isolated the first restriction enzyme, HindII, that could cut
1970
Kent Wilcox DNA molecules within specific recognition sites.
Paul Berg
1972 Produced the first recombinant DNA molecules.
Herb Boyer
Led the team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that refined
1973 Joseph Sambrook DNA electrophoresis by using agarose gel and staining with
ethidium bromide.
Annie Chang Showed that a recombinant DNA molecule can be maintained
1973
Stanley Cohen and replicated in E. coli.
International meeting at Asilomar, California urged the
1975 adoption of guidelines regulating recombinant DNA
experimentation.
Developed the chain termination (dideoxy) method for
1977 Fred Sanger
sequencing DNA.
 The first genetic engineering company (Genentech) is
1977 founded, using recombinant DNA methods to make
medically important drugs.
Somatostatin became the first human hormone produced
1978
using recombinant DNA technology.
Three independent research teams announced the discovery
1981
of human oncogenes (cancer genes).
Used blood samples collected by Nancy Wexler and her co-
1983 James Gusella workers to demonstrate that the Huntington's disease gene is
on chromosome 4.
Published a paper describing the polymerase chain reaction
1985 Kary B. Mullis
(PCR), the most sensitive assay for DNA yet devised.
The Human Genome Project began with the goal of
1988 determining the entire sequence of DNA composing human
chromosomes.
Coined the term DNA fingerprinting and was the first to use
1989 Alec Jeffreys DNA polymorphisms in paternity, immigration, and murder
cases.
Identified the gene coding for the cystic fibrosis
Francis Collins
1989 transmembrane conductance regulator protein (CFTR) on
Lap-Chee Tsui
chromosome 7 that, when mutant, causes cystic fibrosis.
First gene replacement therapy-T cells of a four-year old girl
were exposed outside of her body to retroviruses containing
1990
an RNA copy of a normal ADA gene. This allowed her
immune system to begin functioning.
FlavrSavr tomatoes, genetically engineered for longer shelf
1993
life, were marketed.