Biotechnology

Timeline

Before 17^th Century	· Biotechnological production of foods and beverages -- Sumarians and Babylonians were drinking beer by 6000 B.C. · Egyptians were baking leavened bread by 4000 B.C. · Wine was known in the Near East by the time the book of Genesis was written. · Cheese production has ancient origins; so has mushroom cultivation.
17^th Century	· Pollen grains were discovered the male reproductive cells of plants. · Microscope was invented. · Englishman Robert Hooke discovered cells and wrote his 1667 book, Micrographia. · Dutch microscope developer Antoni van Leeuwenhoek performed research on animal tissues, discovering blood, sperm cells and bacteria. Microorganisms first seen in seventeenth century by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, who developed the simple microscope.
19^th Century	· Cells were found to be structure of all living tissue. · By 1850s, scientists had observed cells dividing. · Gregor Mendel bred generations of pea plants, observed the way they inherited characteristics, and founded modern genetics. · Louis Pasteur discovered that the purpose of cell division was reproduction. Also learned that living cells are dynamic. They use and produce energy and materials. Fermentative ability of microorganisms demonstrated between 1857 and 1876 by Pasteur - the father of biotechnology. · Basic anatomy of cell was discovered. · Charles Darwin and others proposed the Theory of Evolution. · Biotechnological processes initially developed under non-sterile conditions -- Ethanol, acetic acid, butanol and acetone were produced by the end of the nineteenth century by open microbial fermentation processes; waste-water treatment and municipal composting of solid wastes were the largest fermentation capacity practised throughout the world.
20^th Century	· American Thomas Hunt Morgan and his colleagues and his students discovered what the X- and Y-chromosomes do, and Morgan developed the theory of the gene. · Several groups of American scientists showed that both DNA and RNA were found in all cells. · Oswald Avery and his co-workers discovered that if DNA is taken from one type of bacteria and put in a second type, the DNA of the second bacteria takes on characteristics of the first type. · Discovery of antibiotics in 1929 and their subsequent large-scale production in the 1940s. · Introduction of sterility to biotechnological processes -- In the 1940s complicated engineering techniques were introduced to the mass cultivation of microorganisms to exclude contaminating microorganisms. Examples include antibiotics, amino acids, organic acids, enzymes, steroids, polysaccharides, vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. · 1949, Arthur Mirsky discovered that genes were made of DNA. · Early 1950s, scientists knew that DNA is a very long molecule built from subunits called nucleotide. · 1951, American chemist, Linus Pauling, showed for the first time that a protein molecule is in the shape of a helix. · 1952, discovered that RNA is a single helix. · 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase found that transferring a virus's DNA to another organism infected the organisms just as the virus itself would. · Early 1960s, French scientists Jarques Monod and Francois Jacob showed that genes can be turned on and off by regulator genes. Genes that are on can direct protein production. If genes are off, they're inactive. · 1961, first actual coding of amino acids by Americans Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthei. · Early 1970s, first successful gene-altering experiment took place. · 1980s, first genetically engineered plant -- a disease-resistant petunia. · Prior to 1982 insulin for human diabetics was derived from cow and pig pancreases. The gene for human insulin was then isolated, and cloned into a microorganism, which was then mass-produced by fermentation. This genetically engineered human insulin, identical to the natural human hormone, was the first commercial pharmaceutical product of recombinant DNA technology and now supplies millions of insulin users world wide with a safe, reliable and unlimited source of this vital hormone.

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Application -- Elaboration on Renewable Resources Technology

Team ID: C0116084