1665 Robert Hooke's Micrographia
Place: Royal Society of London (17th century): Anton van Leeuwenhoek was the first to assemble formal microscope and described bacteria yeast etc. Microscopes were new in Science and King Charles II funded a research project in 1661 to create a series of microscopical studies. Sir Christopher Wren gave up this project soon.
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Fig.1. Page and drawing where Hooke describes cell for first time. |
It was destined to a self-educated child prodigy, Robert Hooke, he showed technical aptitude and could produce some technology Marvels at an early age. He used his technical aptitude to arrange microscope and looked through microscope beyond for what he was paid. He was commissioned to look for the only insect but looked at whatever he found worth to look at. And finally, he comes across a cork and noted them as cell- unit of life.Hooks observations were recorded in book Micrographia (Book can be found on the following link if link is not working let me know )
This discovery changed the perception of biology and created a trend among scientists to look under a microscope which is popular till today. This gave boost to cellular theory of life
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1668 Francesco Redi's experiments on spontaneous generation
Francesco Redi son Florentine physician Cecilia de’ Ghinci and Gregorio Redi, he completed his graduation from university of Pisa and then move to Florence in where he served in Medici court as a head physician. Francesco Redi was also the member of Accademia del Cimento (1657-1667) an early scientific society founded in the beautiful city of Florence where he produced his masterpiece.
Today we know how important is to do control experiments in biology and He is the one who introduced controlled experiments. He showed that life does not generate spontaneously.
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| Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti |
He submitted his masterpiece work on spontaneous generation and submitted in Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti (Experiments on the Generation of Insects) 1668. He is considered as the founder of experimental biology.Later Lucie pasture carried out further experiments and concluded Omne vivum ex vivo, Latin for "all life [is] from life".
(It's interesting to note that despite his experiments, Redi believed spontaneous generation could occur, for instance, with intestinal worms and gall flies.)
Orignal book is in latin and can be found here
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Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti
This changed perception of biology that life does not originate spontaneously and started investigation further and still we are looking for it but that was a real starting point. Also, the real controlled experimental biology stated after this.
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| Alfred Russel Wallace |
How life Evolved ? is the most interesting and mysterious topic of science for which we still don't have complete answers. After many theories of life from religion to science many people tried to answer in their own capacity.
But in 19th century two people independently came up with idea of idea of natural selection and changed the way we look at life. One of the Most famous names in science, Charles Darwin came up with theory of natural selection for evolution and forgotten hero Alfred Russel Wallace.
They Published Joint Paper in 1858 “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties; and species by natural Means of selection”.One year later Charles Darwin wrote his bestseller book Origin of Species and came in spot light, and wallace did not get fame he deserved.
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| Origin of Species |
1865: Mendel and the discovery of inheritance
Son of Struggling farmer tried to do many things for leaving. Tried to become high school teacher twice and failed finally become a priest and But in his life journey he learned many things about animal breeding and worked with bees and mouse but had to stop because the father of church did not like the idea of studying animal sex.
Then he started working on the plants for which is know now. From his work, he deduced and established 3 laws
Looking at his extensive experiments one could say he was a very patient man it took 8 years (1856-1863) to do his experiments for which he grew over 1oK plants and kept track of their generations. He published in 1865 EXPERIMENTS IN PLANT HYBRIDIZATION (1865) in meetings of the Brünn Natural History Society but he was not appreciated until 1900 when his laws were rediscovered and applied to other organisms as well.
He also studied and made contributions to apiculture, meteorology, and astronomy. He founded Austrian Meteorological Society in 1865.
After these experiments, he could not contribute much to the science as he was promoted to Abbot (a man who is the head of an abbey of monks) and his much time was consumed in the administrative work.
But this discovery changed the perception of the biologist and created a new whole branch of genetics.
Mendel's paper
1915 Yamagiwa adn Ichikawa discover chemical carcinogens Jumping Genes
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/3/1/1-0.full-text.pdf
1953 Sanger and Tuppy announce amino acid sequence in insulinhttp://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/3/1/1-0.full-text.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1197536/?page=1
1958 Lederberg discovers plasmids
PCR
1967 Kornberg, Goulian, and Sinsheimer synthesize DNA molecule
Restriction enzymes
RNAi
CELL REPROGRAMMING
3D genome
CRISPER
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