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In the United States, the first in vivo gene editing procedure is performed, therefore not in cell culture in the laboratory but directly on a patient affected by Hunter syndrome. The therapy, tested by the Californian Sangamo Therapeutics, involves the use of a viral vector

China: Crispr in vitro, in a patient affected by lung cancer: immune cells had been edited to deactivate a gene (PD-1) that blocks the immune response towards tumor cells, and then transplanted back into the patient’s body with the aim of eradicating the tumor.

The U.S. FDA approves the use of genetic modification (GMO) techniques for mosquitoes to combat the spread of the Zika virus, which has caused so much pain and death in Brazil and other nations, and which is now also appearing in Florida. The approved technique

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Insertion of a single human gene Frizzled-8 into a fetal mouse causes disproportionate brain growth, similar to that seen in Homo sapiens.

In the article “A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet” published in Nature, researchers Denis A. Malyshev, Kirandeep Dhami, Thomas Lavergne, Tingjian Chen, Nan Dai, Jeremy M. Foster, Ivan R. Corrêa, Floyd E. Romesberg, of The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, demonstrate the

Improvement of the CRISPR-Cas9 tool, which allows multiple targeted modifications of any DNA in vitro, for purposes such as: fungus and disease resistant plants, animal models of a disease, treating defective organs, reducing cholesterol levels, repairing stem cells in vitro, blocking AIDS infection, and several

Cholera is raging in Haiti, already devastated by the earthquake. There is a rumor among the people, denied by the government, that it was imported by UN soldiers from Nepal, part of the earthquake relief efforts. But a study of the genome of the Vibro

Ronald DePinho of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston demonstrates in an experiment on mice that with appropriate chemical signals it is possible to rejuvenate an appropriately genetically modified organism. The DNA of the mice is modified so as not to express telomerase, which

Craig Venter’s group develops the first artificial cell in the laboratory, controlled by a synthetic genetic heritage. Venter had already conceived the Genome Project in the race to sequence our DNA, arriving first, and had already in the past chemically synthesized the genome of a

Svante Paabo and his team sequence and identify the mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) of Denisovan Homo, extracted from a tiny phalanx of the little finger of a female hand, found in a cave in the Altai Mountains, in Central Asia, in caves also inhabited, at different

The team of experts led by Danish scientists Eske Willerslev and Morten Rasmussen analyzes the ancient remains of one of our ancestors who lived 4,000 years ago on the west coast of Greenland, on the island of Qeqertasussuk. The remains were found in 1986, along

Svante Paabo and his collaborators demonstrate that 2% of human DNA in non-African populations derives from Neanderthals, a small but significant percentage, and well above the error threshold. Neanderthals, after all, are not completely extinct: they live inside us.

A team of scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina discovers the presence of stem cells in amniotic fluid

Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues from Kyoto University publish an article in Cell announcing that they have regressed adult mouse fibroblasts to the stage of embryonic stem cells; the research will be confirmed in June 2007 by two American research groups

Dave Deamer (University of California at Santa Cruz), Dan Branton (Harvard) and George Church (Harvard Medical School) develop the DNA sequencing technique called Nanopore Sequencing based on nanotechnology: in practice a single-stranded DNA is passed through electrical attraction through a 1.5nm pore thus varying the

Californian Scientists Able to Repair Mice Spines with Stem Cells

Advanced Cell Technology announces that it has cloned the human genetic heritage for therapeutic purposes: to produce stem cells (“stem cells”)

Staphylococcus genetic code decoded at Juntendo University in Tokyo

The human genome is published (Celera Genomics publishes in the American journal Science while the Anglo-American public consortium Human Genome Project publishes in the English journal Nature); it turns out to be composed of only 30,000 genes (against the 90,000 expected)

Celera and the international consortium (USA, UK, France, Germany, China) Human Genome Project announce the mapping of 95% of the human genome, in the presence of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair

With 1000 British pounds you can sequence 10,000 bases of DNA; in 1968, 20 were sequenced.

The journal Nature publishes the almost complete sequence (99.7% of the base pairs) of human chromosome 21 (the smallest of the 24, with only 250 of the 100,000 genes, chromosome 21 has 33,546,361 base pairs)

Svante Paabo publishes an article in Nature Genetics in which he underlines that Neanderthals, based on the DNA sequencing of some specimens, probably had little genetic variation, as did Homo Sapiens, indicating that they were the product of a time when individuals capable of reproducing

A team of scientists from the UK, Japan, USA, Canada, Sweden reveal the genetic mapping of human chromosome 22 (545 genes and 134 known pseudo-genes), the second smallest, consists of 33 million base pairs and could contain up to 1000 genes

Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology announces successful cloning of human; experiment halted for ethical reasons after 12 days

University of Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins University Researchers Isolate Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Researchers at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute clone a sheep, generating Dolly

The genetic map of Escherichia coli is completed. It is the first living being to be completely sequenced with the determination of its 4.5 million bases and 4288 genes. After ten years, the functioning of 85% of them and their interactions will already be known,

Start of mass application of genetically modified crops: in 6 years crops will grow to 53 million hectares in 13 countries: USA, China, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Spain; mainly soybeans, corn, rapeseed

First fully decoded genome of a eukaryotic (cell with nucleus): the yeast Saccharomyces Cervisiae

University of Wisconsin team isolates embryonic stem cells in rhesus macaques

Complete Genome of Haemophilus Influenzae Decoded

Linus Pauling Dies in California at Age 93

Food & Drug Administration approves CalGene’s FlavrSavr tomato, the first genetically modified crop to be commercialized; FlavrSavr has been modified to rot much more slowly

A team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, discovers that at least one homosexuality gene is present on the human X chromosome

University of Munich. Matthias Hoss and Svante Paabo publish “The silica extraction method” showing the results of the first extraction of myochondrial DNA (mDNA) from animal bones tens of thousands of years old. In this case, it is about horses from the Pleistocene, 25,000 years

An article is published in the journal Science about the successful sequencing of DNA from a 30 million year old termite, embedded in fossil amber. This will spark the imagination of Hollywood writers and directors. It will be demonstrated some time later, however, that they

The “mimivirus” is discovered in an air conditioning duct in England; it is a huge virus (about the size of a bacterium) and with genetic material that is 80% completely unknown before

First Gene Therapy Intervention in Europe: It is carried out in Milan and it is the first in the world that uses bone marrow stem cells

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monkey farm in Georgia (Caucasus) was dismantled, created by Stalin in 1929 (by decision of the CPSU in 1926) with the aim of studying the possibility of creating an army of ape-men with intermediate properties between humans

The Human Genome Project officially begins in the United States, for the complete mapping of the Human Genome

The first Gene Therapy procedure is performed in the United States: it is performed on a child affected by SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency)

First targeted modification of an animal genome, that of the mouse.

Renato Dulbecco at a conference in Cold Spring Harbor launches the idea of mapping the entire Human Genome; initially treated with ridicule or as a science fiction undertaking, it will soon be taken seriously; Dulbecco, Nobel Prize winner, is Italian by birth, a Catholic partisan,

DNA sequencing methods are being automated

Steen Willadsen in Cambridge, UK, obtains 5 identical twin sheep by splitting a single embryo (embryo splitting)

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) allows DNA sequences to be multiplied in vitro. Characterization and manipulation of DNA sequences in vitro become possible for a large part of DNA existing in nature.

American biochemist Kary Mullis of Cetus Corporation invents PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), a technique that will be widely used to rapidly make billions of copies of a specific small sample of DNA, allowing only small samples to be taken and then amplified, to allow DNA

Thomas Cech (Univ. of Colorado), Sidney Altman (Yale) discover that RNA can itself act as a weak catalyst (within the framework of the theory that sees RNA as a precursor of DNA)

Creso wheat, patented only 7 years earlier by Bozzini and Mosconi, obtained in the “gamma fields” with radioactive cesium, is the most cultivated in Italy.

Embryonic Stem Cells Isolated in Mice for the First Time

Richard Dawkins and, later also Doolittle and Sapienza, Orgel and Crick, develop the theory of the Selfish Gene according to which the true purpose of DNA is to survive, the best way it has found is through the use of vehicles: animals; this theory therefore

Physicist Tullio Regge, in Scientific American, speaks for the first time of creso wheat, patented 5 years earlier by Bozzini and Mosconi, obtained in the “gamma fields” with radioactive cesium. It will soon become (in 1982) the most cultivated in Italy.

Richmond and Smith hypothesize the extracellular nature of organelles (such as mitochondria) and microorganisms that now inhabit the cell; therefore seen as invading organisms then assimilated by the cell at the moment in which the way of reproducing the parasitic genes becomes the same as

First test tube baby at Oldham hospital in England

Ed Lewis discovers that the malformation of the bithorax is caused by a mutation of a single gene, or a control gene

The two Americans Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer obtain somatostatin with genetic engineering

The first methods for sequencing DNA appear and the first human genes are isolated

Grun discovers phenotypic effects of non-nuclear genes (i.e. not present in chromosomes) such as genes in cellular organelles like mitochondria or free in the cytoplasm

Cohen discovers the existence of Jumping Genes in bacteria: genes that jump from species to species by invading a chromosome of another species

Rome. Bozzini and Mosconi patent creso wheat, obtained in “gamma fields” with radioactive cesium, which randomly modifies the genetics of the wheat arranged in a radial pattern around the sample. Then the most promising specimens are selected. The experiments are conducted by Barilla in collaboration

The two Americans Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer demonstrate that it is possible to manipulate DNA to obtain a drug produced by bacteria: somatostatin; it is the birth certificate of genetic engineering

The American Lynn Margulis hypothesizes for the first time the independent origin of DNA organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts, in the form of parasitic prokaryotes

Bacterial enzymes, called restriction enzymes, cut specific DNA sequences, and become essential tools for specifically characterizing and manipulating DNA in vitro

Marshall Niremberg discovers that the basic building blocks of the genetic code of Escherichia coli are the same as those of frogs and guinea pigs: it is a universal code that confirms the common origin of all living beings, already predicted a century earlier by

Scottish chemist Graham Cairns-Smith coined the Inorganic Mineral theory according to which DNA is nothing more than the last link in a chain of cruder replicators whose first links would be made up of mineral replicators that would have acted perhaps in the first billion

Linus Pauling awarded Nobel Peace Prize

John Gurdon of Cambridge University transplants the nucleus of a frog embryo cell into the egg of another frog; the animal develops to the tadpole stage and then dies

WD Hamilton and GC Williams complete the gene’s view of evolution, within the framework of neo-Darwinism: the fundamental unit of life is the Replicator, that is the gene, over time only the most efficient ones have survived in large quantities among them those who collaborated

Brenner and Jakob discover the role of mRNA

Watson and Crick’s theoretical model is confirmed with one of the most beautiful experiments in biology: Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl feed Escherichia coli with heavy nitrogen (with one extra neutron) and discover that its DNA becomes heavier than that of bacteria fed with normal

Kalmus shows that police dogs can distinguish the odor of human sweat except that of identical twins, thus demonstrating the genetic bias of sweat

Linus Pauling awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry

James Watson and Francis Crick publish the article A Structure For Doxyribose Nucleic Acid in Nature; articles by Wilkins and Franklin are also published separately. Rosalind Franklin, who made the microscopic observations, dies in 1958, while Watson and Crick win the Nobel Prize in 1962.

James Watson and Francis Crick discover the double helix structure of DNA

Pauling publishes his article on the alleged triple helix of DNA, but before publishing it, a copy is given by Pauling’s son, Peter, to his laboratory colleagues James Watson and Francis Crick who will be encouraged to continue their research on the subject, and who

Americans Robert Briggs and Thomas King transplant the nucleus of an embryonic cell into a frog egg

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase radioactively label the DNA of phages, subsequently discovering traces of radioactivity in the infected bacterium, but not in the envelope abandoned by the virus outside it. Labeling proteins, however, has the opposite effect. This demonstrates that it is not the

First protein sequence deciphered

Henrietta Lacks cells (HeLa cell line) are cloned in the context of cancer research; within half a century the culture of HeLa cells will assume industrial dimensions: tons per day; all, technically, clones of Henrietta Lacks