The Biodesign Institute: Biotech 101 - History

The Biodesign Institute: Biotech 101 - History: "Unraveling the Genetic Code In the early 20 th century, the seeds of prosperity in the modern biotechnology movement began. New sciences continued to emerge, particularly immunology and genetics. Thomas Hunt Morgan, and his group of fruit fly researchers, made significant contributions to genetics by showing that the basic units of Mendel’s heredity, genes, were physically located on chromosomes. The first cancer causing virus was discovered by Peyton Rous and the first bioremediation project that utilized bacteria to treat raw sewage began in England. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered the mold penicillin which inhibited the growth of a human skin disease-causing bacterium called Staphylococcus aureus, leading to the purification of the first antibiotic, penicillin. In 1943, Oswald Avery and others purified provided definitive evidence that DNA is the material which makes up genes. In 1949, Linus Pauling demonstrated that sickle cell anemia is a disease that can result from a single mutation in a protein. The race to solve the structure for DNA was solved in 1953, when James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin revealed the three-dimensional structure DNA."