A Timeline of Biotech and Synthetic Biology
by piero scaruffi | (contact)
An appendix to the chapter on Biotech
All of these events are explained in my book "Intelligence is not Artificial".
See also: A Timeline of Modern Science
TM, ®, Copyright © 2017 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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1944: Oswald Avery discovers that genes are made of DNA 1953: Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double helix of DNA 
1961: Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei discover how the 4-letter genetic code gets translated into the 20-letter language of proteins 1964: Harvey Nathanson at Westinghouse makes the first MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) 1965: Robert Holley discovers transfer RNA 1969: Jon Beckwith isolates a gene 1971: First Biotech startups (e.g. Cetus) 1973: Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer invent a practical technique to produce recombinant DNA 1974: Waclaw Szybalski coins the term "synthetic biology" 1975: Paul Berg organizes the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA 1976: Genentech is founded 1977: Genentech clone a protein using a synthetic recombinant gene 1977: Fred Sanger invents a method for "sequencing" DNA molecules 1979: Stephen Terry at Stanford builds the first “lab-on-a-chip" 1980: The Supreme Court of the USA rules that life forms can be patente 1980: Janet Rossant creates a chimera combining two mice species 1980: Genentech's IPO, first biotech IPO 1981: Martin Evans identifies embryonic stem cells (in mice) 1982: The first genetically produced medication, humulin, is approved for sale (Eli Lilly + Genentech) 1983: Kary Mullis invents the "polymerase chain reaction" 1983: Richard Feynman’s lecture "Infinitesimal Machinery“  1985: Oliver Smithies discovers how to insert DNA sequences into the human chromosome 1986: Leroy Hood invents a way to automate gene sequencing 1986: Mario Capecchi performs gene editing on a mouse 1989: Bert Vogelstein discovers that the gene p53 acts as a turmor suppressor 1990: William French Anderson's gene therapy 1990: First baby born via PGD (Alan Handyside’s lab)  1992: Calgene creates the first Genetically Manufactured Food (GMF), the "Flavr Savr" tomato 1993: Cynthia Kenyon discovers that a single-gene mutation can double the lifespan of the roundworm 1994: FlavrSavr Tomato 1994: Maria Jasin's homing endonucleases for genome editing 1995: Robert Fleischmann sequences the genome of a free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus Influenzae 1996: Ian Wilmut clones "Dolly" the sheep 1996: Srinivasan Chandrasegaran's ZFN method for genome editing 1997: DARPA’s Microflumes program to fund research in microfluidics 1997: Dennis Lo detects fetal DNA in the plasma of a pregnant mother (prenatal genetic diagnosis) 1997: John Dick and Dominique Bonnet discover that leukemia is caused by tumor stem cells 1998: James Thomson and John Gearhart isolate human embryonic stem cells and grow them in the lab 1999: Agilent introduces the first commercial "lab-on-a-chip" product 2000: George Davey Smith introduces Mendelian randomization 2001: Dana Carroll's ZFN-based genome editing in cells 2002: Wilhelm Ansorge at EMBL develops the amicroarray with the whole human genome 2002: Eckard Wimmer creates the first synthetic virus 2003: Dario Campana's method to make CAR-T cells 2003: The Human Genome Project is completed  2003: The MIT establishes a Registry of Standard Biological Parts 2003: China approves a gene-therapy product, Gendicine 2004: The first international conference on Synthetic Biology is held at the MIT 2004: First commercial microarrays of the whole human genome (Affymetrix, Agilent, Applied Biosystems, Illumina, NimbleGen) 2005: The genomes of the chimpanzee and of rice are published 2005: Jay Keasling (UC Berkeley) artificially produces artemisinin acid 2005: Drew Endy’s “Foundations for Engineering Biology”  2005: Fyodor Urnov uses ZFN to edit human DNA 2007: Personal genomics (Knome, 23andMe) 2007: Shinya Yamanaka converts adult human cells into pluripotent stem cells.  2008: The TALEN technique for genome editing (Dan Voytas and Feng Zhang) 2009: Jean Bennett's gene therapy restores vision in Corey Haas 2010: Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith (Maryland) reprogram a bacterium's DNA 2010: Geron carries out the first stem-cell therapy on a human 2010: Cheap printers for living beings (OpenPCR, Cambrian Genomics) 2010: Carl June's CAR-T therapy 2011: The Voytas/Bogdanove TALEN kit  2012: Cloud-based biotech (Transcriptic) 2012: Markus Covert (Stanford) simulates an entire living organism in software 2012: Jennifer Doudna (UC Berkeley), Emmanuelle Charpentier (Sweden) and Feng Zhang (Broad Inst) develop the CRISPR-cas9 technique for genome editing 2013: Shoukhrat Mitalipov creates human embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos 2014: the first gene-therapy treatment approved in the West, Glybera by UniQure  2014: Jef Boeke synthesizes a chromosome (in yeast) 2014: Floyd Romesberg expands life's genetic alphabet with two new bases in a living bacterium 2014: Scientists at Kunming University in China use CRISPR to edit the germ-line of monkeys 2015: The cost of a personal genetic test-kit is $100, down from $3 billion in 2003 2015: First Summit on Human Gene Editing 2015: Cellectis cures leukaemia in Layla Richards using TALENS editing 2015: Katsuhiko Hayashi's in vitro gametogenesis (IVG)  2016: David Liu’s base editing 2017: First gene therapy for cancer treatment approved in the USA, Kymriah 2017: Michele DeLuca combines stem-cell techniques with gene therapy to create artificial skin to cure a skin disease 2017: Shoukhrat Mitalipov repairs a genetic mutation in human embryos that causes a heart disease    A Timeline of mRNA Medicine 1961: Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matthew Meselson determine the function of messenger RNA 1965: Alec Bangham discovers liposomes 1984: Paul Krieg and Doug Melton synthesize mRNA in a lab (Harvard) 1987: Robert Malone discovers a method to deliver mRNA to human cells so that they begin producing proteins (Salk Institute) 1990: Katalin Kariko proposes using mRNA as an alternative to DNA-based gene therapy (University of Pennsylvania) 1992: Gustav Jirikowski and others test the first mRNA-based gene therapy on rats (Scripps Institute) 1995: Robert Conry designes the first mRNA vaccine (University of Alabama) 1997: Eli Gilboa of Duke University founds Merix Bioscience, the first mRNA therapeutics company 2005: Katalin Kariko' and Drew Weissman publish their research on how to make mRNA vaccines 2008: Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci found BioNTech 2010: Derrick Rossi (Harvard) discovers a method to make mRNA-based gene therapy and founds Moderna 2010: Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci publish the results of their research on mRNA-based cancer vaccines 2012: Andrew Geall's non-viral technique for making mRNA-based drugs 2017: BioNtech's mRNA cancer vaccine 2020: Moderna's and BioNtech's covid19 vaccines based on mRNA Trivia: a timeline of Mutagenesis 1926: Hermann Muller demonstrates that exposure to x-rays caused genetic mutations in the genome of fruit flies 1920s: Lewis Stadler studies corn mutations caused by X-rays and ultraviolet rays Radiation can speed up evolution 1949 "atomic garden" at Brookhaven National Laboratories in Rhode Island: vegetables exposed to radioactive isotopes like cobalt-60 and caesium-137 1950s: Vogue of "atomic" plants and seeds Atomic gardens created 2,700 new varieties of plants, including most sweetcorn varieties Most of today’s mint oil comes from a disease-resistance peppermint plant developed in 1971 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory Radiation breeding is responsible for many of the gorgeous orchid, tulip and rose varieties 1958: Edward Knipling's “sterile insect” technique (sterilizing pupae with radiations) Genetic Engineering Original technique: transferring genes from one animal species to another species 1974 Rudolf Jaenisch and Beatrice Mintz inject viral DNA into the DNA of early mouse embryos and produced the first transgenic mammals 1989 AquAdvantage salmon by Memorial University in Newfoundland in Canada (approved for consumption in Canada in 2016) 1999 fluorescent fish GloFish by National University of Singapore 2000 Nexia Biotechnologies creates goats “augmented” with spider genes so that they produce milk equivalent to spider silk 2014 Valentino Gantz and Ethan Bier experiment gene drive on fruit flies 2015 Recombinetics uses TALEN to create two calves whose offspring should never have horns again 2015 Andrea Crisanti experiments gene drive on mosquitoes 2018 Kimberly Cooper engineers the first gene drive in a mammal (in mice) Cloning Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal (July 1996 in Britain), cloning of cattle in Wisconsin (just a few months later in 1997), cloning cats (the Carbon Copy cat of 2001 in Texas) cloning of horses (“Prometea” in 2003 in Italy) cloning of dogs (“Snuppy” in 2005 in South Korea) A Timeline of CRISPR's discovery
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