Timeline of biotechnology

Notable events in the history of biotechnology:

• before 8000 BC – Collecting of seeds for replanting. Evidence that Mesopotamian people used selective breeding (artificial selection) practices to improve livestock.

• around 7000 BC – Brewing beer, fermenting wine, baking bread with help of yeast.

• 8000 BC - 3000 BC – Yogurt and cheese made with lactic-acid-producing bacteria by various cultures.

• 1590 AD – The microscope is invented by Zacharias Janssen.

• 1675 AD – Microorganisms discovered by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.

• 1856 AD – Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance.

• 1862 AD – Louis Pasteur discover the bacterial origin of fermentation.

• 1919 AD – Karl Ereky, a Hungarian agricultural engineer, first used the word biotechnology.

• 1928 AD – Alexander Fleming noticed that a certain mold, could stop the development of bacterias, leading to the first antibiotic, penicillin.

• 1953 AD – James D. Watson and Francis Crick describe the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, called DNA for short.

• 1972 AD – The DNA composition of chimpanzees and gorillas is discovered to be 99% similar to that of humans.

• 1975 AD – Method for producing monoclonal antibody developed by Kohler and Milstein.

• 1980 AD –
  • Modern biotech is characterized by recombinant DNA technology. The prokaryote model, E. coli, is used to produce insulin and other medicine, in human form. (About 5% of diabetics are allergic to animal insulins available before).
  • A viable brewing yeast strain, Saccharomyces cerevisiae 1026, acts as a modifier of the microflora in the rumen of cows and digestive tract of horses).
  • The United States Supreme Court, in 447 U.S. 303 (1980), rules in favor of microbiologist Ananda Chakrabarty in the case of a USPTO request for a first patent granted to a genetically modified living organism (GMO) in history.

• 1984 AD – Nutrigenomics as applied science in animal nutrition.

• 1994 AD – U.S. FDA approves of the first GM food: the "Flavr Savr" tomato.

• 1997 AD – British scientists, led by Ian Wilmut, from the Roslin Institute report cloning a sheep called Dolly the sheep using DNA from two adult sheep cells.

• 2000 AD – Completion of a, "rough draft," of the human genome in the Human Genome Project.

• 2002 AD – Researchers sequence the DNA of rice, the main food source for two-thirds of the world's population. Rice is the first crop to have its genome decoded.

• 2003 AD – GloFish, the first biotech pet, hits the North American market. Specially bred to detect water pollutants, the fish glows red under black light thanks to the addition of a natural bioluminescence gene.