Gregor Mendel’s hybridization experiments with peas helped
him describe the basic rules of inheritance transmission. His work went unnoticed at the time of publication and it was not until more than 30 years later when its true value was discovered. Publication of The Origin of Species
•The Origin of Species by Darwin introduces the
theory of evolution for the first time, according to which populations evolve over the course of generations through a process known as natural selection. • Years later it would be discovered that the basis of evolution is in the genes. The term "GENE" is coined • Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gen to describe the Mendelian units of inheritance. •Years before, they had already begun to know more details about what were now called genes, for example, in 1869, Swiss physician Johannes Friedrich Miescher became the first scientist to isolate nucleic acids, the active ingredient in DNA. • Years later, in 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered that chromosomes are the carriers of genes. Discovery of the function of genes
•With the link between chromosomes and
inheritance confirmed in 1903, geneticists continued to delve into the knowledge of genes. • In 1941, geneticists Edward Tatum and George Beadle published their work revealing that genes encode proteins. Discovery of the relationship between genes and DNA •Avery-MacLeod-McCarty’s experiment, which isolated DNA as a genetic material, helped discover that genes where made up of DNA Discovery of the physical structure of DNA •The siege on the mystery of DNA was narrowing and in 1953 Watson and Crick described for the first time the structure of DNA, the known double hélix •. Rosalind Franklin discovered the DNA structure was of vital importance DNA is made up of nucleotide chains. • Each nucleotide is made up of three basic components, a sugar, an acid and an organic "base". The base is always one of these four: adenine, thymine, guanine or cytosine Deciphering of the genetic code •Severo Ochoa, Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Mathaei demonstrated that a sequence of three nucleotide bases, a codon, determines each of the 20 existing amino acids. DNA sequencing •Frederick Sanger developed the first method of DNA sequencing. •This is a method to get the sequence of a certain DNA fragment. Dolly the sheep is born
•The birth of a sheep would not matter if it
were not because Dolly was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. • Dolly only lived six and a half years, almost half of what a normal sheep lives, which revealed premature aging, because when he was born he had the genetic age of the cell from which he came. "Final" compilation of the human genome •The objective of the Human Genome Project was to determine the sequence of all the genes of the human genome. •This was a complex process of genetic mapping that began in 1990 and was terminated in 2006, with the publication of the last chromosome sequence.