A Historical Timeline: Cracking the Code of Life
<<Previous | 1859-1902 | 1910-1962 | 1966-1978 | 1980-1988 | 1990-2003
1990
W. French Anderson applies gene therapy for the first time. The recipient is a young girl with ADA deficiency, an immune system disorder.
The Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health formally launch the Human Genome Project , a 15-year international effort to locate all of the genes in the human genome and make them accessible for further biological study. Another goal of the project is to determine the complete sequence of the genome's 3 billion DNA nucleotide base pairs.
1992
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California discover a gene present in 25 to 30 percent of the population that predisposes individuals to increased heart attack risk. Discovery of this marker for heart disease on chromosome 19 may make possible the development of a simple test to screen humans for susceptibility to heart disease.
England's Wellcome Trust joins the Human Genome Project.
1994
The Department of Energy launches its Microbial Genome Program.
1995
Craig Venter and colleagues at The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland decode the first whole genome of a free-living single-cell organism, the influenza microbe, using the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method.
1996
Ian Wilmut and other researchers at Scotland's Roslin Institute clone a sheep from the cell of an adult ewe. This non-sexually produced animal is named "Dolly."
The complete genome of the E. coli bacteria is sequenced.
1998
The first complete genome sequence of a multicellular organism, the roundworm C. elegans, is published.
1999
The DOE Joint Genome Institute, a genome-sequencing center formed by Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos national laboratories, dedicates its new production sequencing facility in Walnut Creek, California.
The complete genome of the Drosophila fruit fly is sequenced.
2000
Working drafts of the human genome are completed by the public International Human Genome Project and by Craig Venter's Celera Genomics, a private company.
2001
The draft human genome sequence is published in the journals Nature and Science. Twenty sequencing centers in six countries--China, France, Germany, England, Japan, and the United States--contribute to the project. Most of the sequencing is done by five major centers: the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Center in England, the DOE Joint Genome Institute in California, and three NIH-funded centers at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Washington University School of Medicine in Missouri, and the Whitehead Institute in Massachusetts.
2001-2002
DOE launches its "Genomes to Life" program.
As rapid, highly accurate sequencing techniques become readily available, the complete genomes of a wide variety of microbes and model organisms, including the mouse, pufferfish, malaria mosquito, and sea squirt, are sequenced and analyzed. Genome comparisons yield significant new insights into the causes and progress of disease, biological evolution, and the relationship between organisms and the environment.
2003
The finished human genome is published concurrent with the 50th Anniversary of the discovery of the double helix.
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