Plant Molecular Biology 1700’ Tomas Robert Malthus ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ : no more foods, no more growth in population Lecture 1

1800’ Charles Darwin Where there is not enough food, who will survive? -natural selection : the survival of the fittest Characteristics are acquired?

Darwin’s Quenstions….. How do living organisms inherit the characteristics of their parents? What accounts for the differences between closely related individuals? How does novelty arise in biology?

Timeline 1866 Gregore Mendel: rule of genetic inheritance 1869 Frederich Miescher: discovery of DNA 1911 Thomas Morgan: the genetics of fruit fly 1931 Barbara McClintock corn genetics and jumping gene 1941 George Beadle and Edward Tatum: Each genes codes for a single protein 1944 Avery: DNA is the genetic material(transforming factor) 1950 Erwin Chargaff: Chargaff’s rule 1952 Rosalind Franklin: DNA X-ray diffraction 1952 Hershey and Chase: : DNA is the genetic material (The blender experiment) 1953 Watson and Crick: Double helical structure for DNA

1955 Francis Crick: The Central Dogma 1958 Meselson and Stahl: DNA replicates semiconservatively 1961 Sydney Brenner: messenger RNA 1961 Marshall Nirenberg: The genetic code 1961 Jacob and Monod: Operon model for genetic regulation 1970 Temin and Baltimore: Reverse transcriptase in retroviruses 1972 Cohen and Boyer: Recombinant DNA 1975 Fredrick Sanger: DNA sequencing 1987 Kary Mullis: polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) 1990~present, Cloning of ‘Dolly’ the sheep, Human genome sequence, DNA chip technology, genes for human diseases, GMO, etc.

One thing we do know is that to be an intelligent player We admit that we really don’t really know what the future will bring. One thing we do know is that to be an intelligent player in the future molecular revolution, you should understand what your genes are up to.