From Mendel to the genome project: how ” “man has arrived at the cloning of human beings” “in less than a century and a half” “” “” “
1865: Gregor Mendel conducts systematic research on hybridization between beans and peas, from which the principles of heredity known as Mendel’s Laws would be developed. 1869: Friedrich Miescher succeeds in isolating a substance to which he gives the name nucleic acid. 1893: August Weismann demonstrates that father and mother contribute in equal parts to transmitting “hereditary information” to their children. 1902/1903: Walter Stanborough Sutton enunciates the thesis that Mendel’s “factors” are located inside the chromosomes. 1909: Wilhelm Johannsen introduces the concept of “gene” to denote the hereditary transmission of a determined characteristic by one form of life to its offspring. 1944: the Rockfeller Institute in New York demonstrates that genetic information is transmitted through the DNA chain. 1952: Robert W. Briggs and Thomas J. King perform the first transplants of cell nuclei in America. 1953: James Watson and Francis Crick describe as a double helix the structure of the DNA; this discovery would win them the Nobel Prize in 1962. 1958: Arthur Kornberg isolates the “DNA polymerase”, the first enzyme by which to produce DNA in the test tube. 1973: at the university of Stanford, in California, extraneous genetic material is introduced into a bacterium for the first time. 1978: Herbert Boyer modifies the bacterium Escherichia coli to make it produce human insulin; Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, is born in England. 1986: cloning introduced into the breeding of animals. 1989: the transmission of extraneous genes in the cells of the human body by viral action is successfully achieved for the first time in the USA. 1990: gene therapy on human beings begins; the international human genome project to trace the map of the human hereditary makeup is inaugurated. 1992: the map of chromosome 21 and chromosome Y, which determine the male sex, is identified. 1995: the embryonal cells of animals are successfully multiplied at the Roslin Institute, in Scotland; two live sheep are born. 1996: 5 July, “Dolly” the sheep, cloned from cells of adult animals placed in an egg cell removed from the nucleus, is born at the Roslin Institute; December, the American Richard Seed announces that he wants to clone human beings. 1998: January, the first cloned and genetically modified calves are born. 1999: Craig Venter officially launches the analysis of the human genome. 2000: January, the Center of research on primates in Beaverton (Oregon) clones a primate. June: Scottish researchers implant extraneous genes in adult sheep and create a new animal; the method permits multiple sheep to be cloned with the same characteristics. 26 June: the human genome project announces the decodification of 97% of the human genetic makeup. 12 December: the decodification of the first plant is published. 13 December: the Estonian Parliament votes the establishment of a national genetic data bank. A DNA data bank already exists in Iceland. 2001: 12 February, Craig Vender and the human genome project present a detailed map of the human hereditary makeup. March: Severino Antinori announces his intention to clone children by the summer of 2002. April: British researchers clone 5 genetically modified pigs. July: the American corporation Clonaid conducts secret research with the aim of cloning human beings. September: Chinese scientists conduct cross-breeding genetic research between man and rabbit, achieving a tolerance in the development of the embryo to the stage of 16 cells. 25 November 2001: American scientists clone a human embryo for the first time.
