History
The term "operon" was first proposed in a short paper in the Proceedings of the French Academy of Science in 1960. From this paper, the so-called general theory of the operon was developed. This theory suggested that all genes are controlled by means of operons through a single feedback regulatory mechanism– repression. Later, it was discovered that the regulation of genes is a much more complicated process. Indeed, it is not possible to talk of a general regulatory mechanism, because different operons have different mechanisms. Despite modifications, the development of the concept is considered a landmark event in the history of molecular biology. The first operon to be described was the lac operon in E. coli. The 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to François Jacob, André Michel Lwoff and Jacques Monod for their discoveries concerning the operon and virus synthesis.
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