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In the 1950s [[Linus Pauling]] described the three-dimensional structure of [[protein]]s, and James Watson and Francis Crick described the [[double helix]] of the [[DNA]] molecule. Further advances were made in understanding [[DNA]], [[protein]], and [[virus]] synthesis and the regulation of [[gene]]s, and by the 1970s, the techniques of [[genetic engineering]] were enabling molecular biologists to study higher plants and animals, opening up the possibility of manipulating plant and animal [[gene]]s to achieve greater agricultural productivity. Such techniques also opened the way for the development of [[gene therapy]].
In the 1950s [[Linus Pauling]] described the three-dimensional structure of [[protein]]s, and James Watson and Francis Crick described the [[double helix]] of the [[DNA]] molecule. Further advances were made in understanding [[DNA]], [[protein]], and [[virus]] synthesis and the regulation of [[gene]]s, and by the 1970s, the techniques of [[genetic engineering]] were enabling molecular biologists to study higher plants and animals, opening up the possibility of manipulating plant and animal [[gene]]s to achieve greater agricultural productivity. Such techniques also opened the way for the development of [[gene therapy]].
==Timeline of Molecular Biology Discoveries==
The chief discoveries of molecular biology took place in a period of only about twenty-five years.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Date
! Event
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1940
| George Beadle and Edward Tatum demonstrated the existence of a precise relationship between genes and proteins. In the course of their experiments connecting genetics with biochemistry, they switched from the genetics mainstay Drosophila to a more appropriate model organism, the fungus Neurospora; the construction and exploitation of new model organisms would become a recurring theme in the development of molecular biology.
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1944
| Oswald Avery, working at the Rockefeller Institute of New York, demonstrated that genes are made up of DNA.
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1952
| Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase confirmed that the genetic material of the bacteriophage, the virus which infects bacteria, is made up of DNA.
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1953
| James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helical structure of the DNA molecule.
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1961
| Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod hypothesized the existence of an intermediary between DNA and its protein products, which they called messenger RNA.
|- valign="TOP"
| align="RIGHT" nowrap | 1961-1965
| The relationship between the information contained in DNA and the structure of proteins was determined: there is a genetic code, which creates a correspondence between the succession of nucleotides in the DNA sequence and a series of amino acids in proteins. Monod and Jacob also demonstrated how certain specific proteins, called regulative proteins, latch onto DNA at the edges of the genes and control the transcription of these genes into messenger RNA; they direct the "expression" of the genes.
|}
==See Also==
==See Also==