Classical genetics as background

Question 1

List the 1850s and 1860s milestones in genetics

Answer 1

> 1858: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace presented their ideas on the development of species through natural selection of inheritable traits
1859: Charles Darwin released his book ‘ The Origin of Species’
1860: Louis Pasteur’s work brought the idea of the 3D molecular structure into biology- – ‘to understand how a biological process works, we must know the detailed spatial structure of the relevant molecules’
1865: Gregor Mendel read his paper ‘ Experiments on Plant Hybridization .’ It was published the following year.
1869: Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA

Question 2

List the discoveries that lead to the answer to the question what is a gene?

Answer 2

> 1931: Frederick Griffith ‘the transformation principle’ - horizontal gene transfer
1944: Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty – DNA is the ‘transforming principle ‘
1952: Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase proved that DNA is the hereditary material
1953: James Watson and Francis Crick – Structure of DNA