The DNA Era
- 1944: The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment isolates DNA as the genetic material (at that time called transforming principle)
- 1948: Barbara McClintock discovers transposons in maize
- 1950: Erwin Chargaff shows that the four nucleotides are not present in nucleic acids in stable proportions, but that some general rules appear to hold (e.g., that the amount of adenine, A, tends to be equal to that of thymine, T).
- 1952: The Hershey-Chase experiment proves the genetic information of phages (and all other organisms) to be DNA
- 1953: DNA structure is resolved to be a double helix by James D. Watson and Francis Crick
- 1956: Joe Hin Tjio, while working in Albert Levan's lab, established the correct chromosome number in humans to be 46
- 1958: The Meselson-Stahl experiment demonstrates that DNA is semiconservatively replicated
- 1961 - 1967: Combined efforts of scientists "crack" the genetic code, including Marshall Nirenberg, Har Gobind Khorana, Sydney Brenner & Francis Crick
- 1964: Howard Temin showed using RNA viruses that the direction of DNA to RNA transcription can be reversed
- 1970: Restriction enzymes were discovered in studies of a bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae, enabling scientists to cut and paste DNA
Read more about this topic: History Of Genetics
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