Rockefeller University researcher Oswald T. Avery and colleagues demonstrate that DNA is the carrier of genetic information in experiments with the bacteria that cause bacterial pneumonia.

Sequence of DNA molecules found to control cell growth via some sort of code.
Using electrophoresis, a technique that separates proteins in an electric field, Linus Pauling separates normal hemoglobin from sickle cell anemia hemoglobin, proving that genetic disease can be understood in molecular terms.

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase use radioactively labled E. coli to prove that DNA and not proteins had penetrated interior of cells and was the true carrier of heredity.

Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin determine DNA "outline" using crystallography and X-ray diffraction.

James Watson and Francis Crick propose a double helix as the molecular strucure of DNA, a discovery that later wins them the Nobel Prize.

American researchers Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl show that old strand of DNA acts as a template for formation of new strand and that synthesis of new DNA occurs while old chromosome is in process of uncoiling.
Americans George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum recieve for work with bread mold which lead to hypothesis "one gene, one enzyme."

French molecular biologists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod propose that differences in the structure and function of cells result from the selective expression and repression of certain genes.

Marshall Nirenburg cracks genetic code.

Isolation of first restriction enzyme, a specialized protein used to cut DNA strands precisely at specific locations.

Paul Berg and Stanford colleagues synthesize first recombinant DNA molecule by linking different DNA fragments in a test tube.

UCSF's Herbert Boyer and Stanford's Stanley Cohen perform first genetic engineering experment by splicing toad genes into E. coli bacteria.

UCSF's J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus discover genes, called oncogenes, that can lead to cancer. 13 years later, they share the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this discovery.
Yuet Wai Kan pioneers molecular techniques that allow the first fetal test to identify sickle cell anemia, a hereditary blood disease that affects blacks.

Using recominant DNA techniques, K. Itakura and colleagues clone the first human gene which produces the growth inhibiting hormone somatostatin.
William Rutter and UCSF colleagues isolate gene for rat insulin and transplant it into bacteria. Five years later, genetically engineered human insulin goes on the market.
Development of rapid DNA-sequencing techniques fuel growth of scientific inquiry.

The biotechnology company Genentech, Inc., in a collaboration with UCSF, develops synthetic human growth hormone.
Using gene mapping techniques, UCSF's Y.W. Kan and Judy Chang discover the single genetic mutation responsible for beta thalassemia, the most common form of life-shortening blood disease. Discovery leads to prenatal tests for scores of different regional mutations. John Baxter and Howard Goodman were the first to clone the gene for human growth hormone, which became the second genetically engineered product to receive government approval.

Virus-fighting interferon cloned.

Transgenic mice and transgenic fruit flies first produced. They soon become standard ways for studying mutations, gene expression and human disease. Seven years later, a cancer prone transgenic mouse becomes the first patented life form.

Barbara McClintock wins Nobel Prize in Physiology for her discovery that some genes can "jump around" from one chromosome to another.

Biochemist William Rutter and his Emeryville Chiron Corp. produce the first genetically engineered vaccine against hepatitis b to be put on the market.

NIH approves use of gene therapy on 4-year-old girl with rare immune system disorder.
America's Human Genome Project begins. Its goal is to map and clone every gene in the human body. UCSF's Rick Myers, David Cox and colleagues begin mapping chromosomes 4 and 21.

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