A brief history of modern biology

Contributors

Author(s)

Anton Nekrutenko

Charles Darwin

.center[The fabric of biology: 1809 - 1882]

Provisional theory of pangenesis. All sperm, egg, buds consisted of multitude of gemmules given off by “ each separate atom of the organism ”.

Francis Galton

.center[Experimental validation: 1822 - 1911]

Blood transfusion in rabbits produces no evidence to support provisional theory of pangenesis.

Darwin gets pissed

Gregor Johann Mendel

.center[Quantifiable heredity: 1822 - 1884]

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• Born in Austro-Hungarian Empire (1822)
• Admitted at the Augustinian monastery in Brno (1843)
• Studies in Vienna with Doppler, Ettinghausen, Redtenbacher, Fenzl, and Unger (1851 - 1853)
• Teaches at the Monastery (1853 - 1868)
• Grows 28,000 plants and analyzed seven pairs of traits ]

Mendel gets lucky

.footnote[(From Magner 2002)]

.footnote[(From Gonick Wheelis 1991)]

Perhaps too lucky

.footnote[(From Sturtevant 2001)]

deVreis/Correns/Tschemak

.center[The Rediscovery]

Meanwhile chromosomal theory evolves

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• Species have a constant number of chromosomes
• Equal numbers come from egg and sperm
• Reduction is accomplished by divisions
• Chromosomes are bearers of hereditary material

]

The fly room

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Morgan/Sturtevant/Bridges/Muller

• Chromosomes contain hereditary information
• Genes are linearly distributed along chromosome
• Gene is a unit of information
• Gene can define characteristics such as eye color, wing shape etc.

]

Academic competition!

.footnote[(From Carson 2004)]

But what is the carrier of information?

• Miescher

  nucleic acids

• Kossel

  DNA, RNA, histones

• Levene

  tetranucleotide theory

• Chargaff

  parity rules

• Griffith, Avery, MacLeod, McCarty

  nucleic acid is the transforming factor

The Church of Phage

• Delbrück, Luria, Hershey

  replication and genetic structure of viruses

• Lwoff

  profage and lysogeny

• Lederberg, Hayes

  bacterial sex, plasmids

• Hershey, Chase

  DNA = heredity

• Watson

  …

Delbrück, Luria, Hershey

NP 1969: “ discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and genetic structure of viruses “

Luria Delbrück Experiment

Hershey-Chase experiment

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Lederberg-Tatum experiment

Genetic recombination in E. coli

Blender again!

DNA

• Crick, Franklin, Watson, Wilkins

  the structure of DNA

• Meselson, Stahl

  semiconservative replication

• Ochoa, Kornberg

  enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids

• Holley, Nirenberg, Khorana

  the code

Crick, Franklin, Watson, Wilkins

DNA is an antiparallel double helix

Meselson, Stahl

DNA replication is semiconservative

Meselson-Stahl experiment

CsCl gradient centrifugation

Gene function

• Lwoff, Jacob, Monod

  genetic map and gene regulation

• Beadle, Tatum

  one gene = one protein

• Pauling, Ingram

  molecular disease

Lwoff, Jacob, Monod

Lysogeny, prophage, genetic maps, gene regulation

Reverse Transcription, Recombinant Age

• Temin, Baltimore

  reverse transcription

• Cohen, Boyer

  recombinant methodologies

• Berg

  SV40

• Maxam, Gilbert, Sanger

  sequencing is here

Berg experiment

PCR

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DNA Sequencing is here!

Thank you!