DNA Timeline

Gregor Mendel

July 20, 1822 - January 6, 1884

Mendel is Austrian and studied in the field of genetics and known for creating the science of genetics. His genetic experiments took him 8 years (1856-1863) and published his results in 1865.

The work he studied with was pea plants, to discover laws of inheritance. Mendel discovered that genes come in pairs and inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. He tracked parental genes and whether a trait will be recessive or dominant in an offspring and saw mathematical patterns between generations and their inheritance. There are 3 laws of inheritance:

- The law of segregation

- The law of independent assortment

- The law of dominance

His work was rediscovered and understood in the 1900s by Theodor Boveri and Walter Sutton.

(Slideshare.net, 2018)

Friedrich Miescher

3 August, 1844 – 26 August,1895

Miescher is a Swiss biologist and physician, known for the discovery of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA).

He was isolating the molecules within cells, he did lymphoid cells – white blood cells. With the white blood cells, he isolated what he called "nuclein" from the cell nucleus. Realizing nuclein was made up of nitrogen hydrogen and oxygen, and phosphorus, and having acidic properties.

(YouTube, 2018)

Phoebus Levene

25 February, 1869 – 6 September, 1940

Levene was an American biochemist that discovered the two different forms of nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, that being deoxyribose and ribose.

He also discovered how nucleic acids link with a phosphate sugar group and formed nucleotides, the backbone of the molecule.

"Levene is known for his "tetranucleotide hypothesis" (formulated around 1910) which first proposed that DNA was made up of equal amounts of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Before the later work of Erwin Chargaff, it was widely thought that DNA was organized into repeating "tetranucleotides" in a way that could not carry genetic information" (En.wikipedia.org, 2018)

He thought there were only four nucleotides per molecule and could not store the genetic code. But, his work was key for later discoveries.

(Slideplayer.com, 2018)

Thomas Hunt Morgan

September 25, 1866 to December 4, 1945

Morgan was an American biologist that studied in the field of genetics and embryology. He is known for the modern science development of genetics.

“Morgan began to study the genetic characteristics of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In his famous Fly Room at Columbia University, Morgan demonstrated that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. These discoveries formed the basis of the modern science of genetics.” (En.wikipedia.org, 2018)

He discovered the role that chromosomes play in hereditary, and recieved a nobel prize for establishing the chromosomal theory of inheritance.

(Khan Academy, 2018)

Oswald Avery

October 21st, 1877 - February 20th, 1955

Avery is a Canadian-American who studied the field of molecular biology. He is known for the avery-macleod-mccarty experiments and DNA transmits hereditary.

Avery and his team, Colin Macleod and Macyln McCarty, did tests on specific bacteria, pneumococcus, from one type to another through what they identified "sodium desoxyribonucleate" as the transforming principle, known today as DNA. (En.wikipedia.org, 2018) Their discovery that was made is genes are made of DNA, despite what they had thought.

(Slideshare.net, 2018)

James Watson and Francis Crick

April 6th, 1928 - present and June 8th, 1916 - July 28th, 2004.

Watson is an American molecular biologist and Crick is a British biologist, both know for discovering the structure of DNA. With crucial work from other researchers and developments to DNA Watson and Crick led to the discovery of the three-dimensional, double helix DNA model, piecing information together.

Such work being, “Chargaff's realization that A = T and C = G, combined with some crucially important X-ray crystallography work by English researchers Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins” (Nature.com, 2018)

(Nature.com, 2018)

Marshal Nirenberg

April 10, 1927 – January 15, 2010

Nirenberg is an American known for the contribution to solving the genetic code. Him and his group deciphered the entire genetic code by matching amino acids to synthetic triplet nucleotides.

"DNA consists of a code language comprising four letters which make up what are known as codons, or words, each three letters long. Interpreting the language of the genetic code was the work of Marshall Nirenberg and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health. Their careful work, conducted in the 1960s, paved the way for interpreting the sequences of the entire human genome." (American Chemical Society, 2018)

Within time, the start codon AUG was discovered as well as the three stop codons UAG, UAA, UGA. These codons initiate the start of protein synthesis and signal the end of it.

(Google.ca, 2018)

Frederick Sanger

13 August, 1918 – 19 November, 2013

Sanger was a biochemist concerned with determining the base sequences of nucleic acids. He first sequenced the amino groups in the insulin molecule, first person to get a protein sequence. Sanger proved that proteins were molecules with order and analogy. Also, the genes and DNA that make the proteins should also have a sequence, and that is what he researched and discovered next.

In the end, sequencing the amino acids of DNA and RNA by a chain termination method.

(YouTube, 2018)

Human Genome

1990-2004

"The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of nucleotide base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint.[1] It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project.[2] After the idea was picked up in 1984 by the US government when the planning started, the project formally launched in 1990 and was declared complete on April 14, 2003[3]. Funding came from the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as numerous other groups from around the world." (Genomenewsnetwork.org, 2018)

The HGP is a mosaic human genome and not a representation of one specfic individual, since each individual is unqiue .

(Google.ca, 2018)

Works Cited

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Gregor Mendel. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

Dnaftb.org. (2018). Mendel as the Father of Genetics :: DNA from the Beginning. [online] Available at: http://www.dnaftb.org/1/bio.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Friedrich Miescher. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Miescher [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

Dnaftb.org. (2018). Friedrich Miescher :: DNA from the Beginning. [online] Available at: http://www.dnaftb.org/15/bio.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Phoebus Levene. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_Levene [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Thomas Hunt Morgan. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hunt_Morgan [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Oswald Avery. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Avery [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). James Watson. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Francis Crick. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

Nature.com. (2018). Discovery of DNA Double Helix: Watson and Crick Learn Science at Scitable. [online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/discovery-of-dna-structure-and-function-watson-397 [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Marshall Warren Nirenberg. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Warren_Nirenberg [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

American Chemical Society. (2018). Deciphering the Genetic Code - National Historic Chemical Landmark - American Chemical Society. [online] Available at: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/geneticcode.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

Dnaftb.org. (2018). Marshall Warren Nirenberg :: DNA from the Beginning. [online] Available at: http://www.dnaftb.org/22/bio.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). (2018). Online Education Kit: 1966: Genetic Code Cracked. [online] Available at: https://www.genome.gov/25520300/online-education-kit-1966-genetic-code-cracked/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Frederick Sanger. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Walter Gilbert. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gilbert [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

Genomenewsnetwork.org. (2018). GNN - Genetics and Genomics Timeline. [online] Available at: http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/resources/timeline/2000_human.php [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Human Genome Project. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].