DNA Structure Discovery

In 1953, two young scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick made one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century.

They worked out the structure of DNA - large molecule found in every cell of our body that contains all the information required for life.

Watson and Crick used experimental results obtained buy Rosalind Franklin to help build their model showing the shape of DNA.

Crick and Watson wrote-up their findings and had them published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953 in an article titled “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”.

Following the discovery of the first practical microspore in late 17th century by A. van Leeuwenhoek (1623-1723), research was dominated for several decades by cytologists doing observations of all kind of material under the microsphere.

In 1665, Robert Hooke named cells the smallest living biological structure surrounded by walls observed in cork.

It was in 1869, a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher isolated a substance that he called ‘nuclein’, now known as DNA.

Only a few years earlier Gregor Mendel had finished series of experiments with peas and made observations that turned out to be so closely connected the the finding of nuclein. This was the starting of the science of genetics.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was the one who study the DNA and get credit for the discovery of double helix.

And it was Rosalind Franklin (1921-1958), whose X-ray images of DNA crystals gave clues about the double helical structure.

Franklin used –x-ray diffraction techniques, to experimentally examine the structure of DNA.

The earliest studies reveled genes to be discrete factors that were retained throughout the life of an organism and then passed on tor each of its progeny.

Over the following century, these hereditary factors were shown to reside on chromosomes and to consist of DNA, a macromolecule with extraordinary properties.

The discovery of the form of the DNA molecule and its code is considered by many to be one of the most important discoveries of modern science.

It wasn’t until the mid seventies, with new technologies of replicating and ‘cutting and pasting’ DNA that the genetic information explosion took off.
DNA Structure Discovery

History of Genetic Engineering

History of Genetic Engineering
The origins of biotechnology culminated with the birth of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering based on genetics, a science started from the early 1900’s based on experiments by the Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel.

In 1944, DNA is identified as the carrier of genetic information by Oswald Avery Colin McLeod and Maclyn McCarty.

Later two important key events happened. One was the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, by Watson and Crick, and the other was the 1973 discovery by Cohen and Boyer of a recombinant DNA technique by which a section of DNA was cut from the plasmid of an E. coli bacterium and transferred into the DNA of another.

During the late 1970’s, researchers used recombinant DNA to engineer bacteria to produce small quantities of insulin and interferon.

One of the key scientific figures that attempted to highlight the promising aspects of genetic engineering was Joshua Lederberg, a Stanford professor and Nobel laureate.

In 1980, green genetic engineering was born. Genetic material is introduced into cell cultures for the first time ever with the aid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

In 1982, The U.S Food and Drug Administration approve the first genetically engineered drug, Genentech’s Humulin, a form of human insulin produced by bacteria.

In 1987, the first field tests of genetically engineered crops (tobacco and tomato) are conducted in the United States. Committee of the national Academy of Sciences concluded that transferring genes between species of organisms posed no serious environmental hazards.

In year 2000, International Biosafety Protocol is approved by 130 countries at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, Canada. The protocol agrees upon labeling of genetically engineered crops.
History of Genetic Engineering