Genetics: Mendel to CRISPR

1865 – 202055 items

geneticsscience
Bases of a replica of Watson and Crick’s 1953 double-helix model, Berlin Museum of Medical History, 2025. Photo: Flocci Nivis. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bases of a replica of Watson and Crick’s 1953 double-helix model, Berlin Museum of Medical History, 2025. Photo: Flocci Nivis. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From a monastery garden to editing genomes

In February 1865 an Augustinian friar read a paper on pea hybrids to a natural-science society in Brünn. Nobody understood it for 35 years. A century and a half later, two women shared a Nobel prize for a tool that rewrites DNA letter by letter. In between, heredity went from a ratio to a molecule, a code, a three-billion-letter text and finally something that can be edited.

How it is built

Four eras run as bands: the decades Mendel was overlooked, classical genetics (genes on chromosomes), molecular biology (the gene becomes a molecule), and genetic engineering and genomics. Shorter bands mark Morgan’s fly room, the Eugenics Record Office, the race for the genetic code, Asilomar and the Human Genome Project. Events sit on the map at the labs where the work was done, from Brno and Tübingen to Umeå and Shenzhen. Dates are Gregorian; a day is given only where a paper, a ruling or an announcement fixes it.

Threads to follow

  • heredity: Mendel’s ratios, the fly room, maps and mutants

  • dna: from nuclein to the double helix and the code

  • genomes: reading DNA, from Sanger to the human genome

  • biotechnology: cutting, copying and pasting genes, up to CRISPR

  • ethics: eugenics, the Asilomar pause and the gene-edited twins

  • women: McClintock, Franklin, Charpentier and Doudna

  • nobel: the prizes along the way

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. — Watson and Crick, Nature, 25 April 1953

Items

  1. Mendel reads “Experiments on Plant Hybrids” in Brünn

    Brünn (Brno), Moravia

  2. Mendel overlooked

    ≈ 34 years

  3. “Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden” is published

  4. Darwin’s guess: pangenesis

  5. Miescher finds “nuclein” in pus

    Schloss Hohentübingen, Tübingen

  6. Galton coins “eugenics”

  7. Mendel dies in Brno

    Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas, Old Brno

  8. Classical genetics: genes on chromosomes

    ≈ 44 years

  9. Three botanists rediscover Mendel

  10. The gene gets its name

  11. The Eugenics Record Office

    ≈ 29 years, 6 months · Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York

  12. Morgan’s fly room

    18 years · Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, New York

  13. A white-eyed fly

    Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, New York

  14. Sturtevant draws the first genetic map

    Schermerhorn Hall, Columbia University, New York

  15. Buck v. Bell

    Old Senate Chamber, US Capitol, Washington

  16. Muller mutates genes with X-rays

    University of Texas, Austin

  17. Griffith’s transforming principle

    London

  18. Morgan wins the first Nobel for genetics

  19. Germany’s sterilisation law

    Berlin

  20. One gene, one enzyme

    Stanford University, California

  21. Molecular biology: the gene becomes a molecule

    22 years

  22. Avery: the gene is DNA

    Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York

  23. Lysenko’s August session

    7 days · Moscow

  24. McClintock’s jumping genes

    Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York

  25. Chargaff’s rules

    College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Washington Heights, New York

  26. Photo 51

    King’s College London, Strand

  27. Hershey and Chase: the blender experiment

    Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York

  28. Watson and Crick find the base pairs

    Cavendish Laboratory, Free School Lane, Cambridge

  29. The double helix in Nature

  30. Rosalind Franklin dies

    Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham Road, Chelsea

  31. Meselson and Stahl: one old strand, one new

    California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

  32. Cracking the genetic code

    ≈ 5 years, 1 month

  33. UUU spells phenylalanine

    Building 10, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda

  34. Nobel prize for the double helix

    Stockholm Concert Hall (Konserthuset)

  35. Genetic engineering and genomics

    ≈ 47 years

  36. Cohen and Boyer splice DNA

    Stanford University, California

  37. Asilomar

    3 days · Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California

  38. Sanger sequencing

    MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge

  39. Human insulin from bacteria

    Genentech, South San Francisco

  40. Mullis invents PCR

    Cetus Corporation, Emeryville, California

  41. Jeffreys sees a genetic fingerprint

    University of Leicester

  42. Strange repeats in E. coli

    Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Suita

  43. The first gene therapy

    Building 10, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda

  44. The Human Genome Project

    ≈ 12 years, 6 months

  45. The first genome of a free-living organism

    The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, Maryland

  46. Dolly the sheep is born

    Roslin Institute, Roslin, Midlothian

  47. A draft of the human genome

    East Room, the White House

  48. Two human genomes in print

  49. The Human Genome Project is declared complete

  50. CRISPR is an immune system

    University of Alicante

  51. Charpentier finds tracrRNA

    Umeå University

  52. Cas9, a programmable DNA cutter

    Stanley Hall, University of California, Berkeley

  53. CRISPR edits human cells

    Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts

  54. He Jiankui announces gene-edited twins

    Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen

  55. Nobel prize for CRISPR

    Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm