AGB 121: Principles of Animal Genetics and Population Genetics (2+1)

POST - MENDEL

• It was not until the early 20th century that of Mendel's work were recognized.
• In 1900, his work was rediscovered by Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), German botanist Carl Correns (1864-1933) and Austrian agronomist Erich von Tschermak (1871-1962). His results were quickly replicated, and genetic linkage studies quickly worked out.
• William Bateson (1861–1926) was the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900.
• Ronald Fisher in 1918 used Mendelian genetics as the basis of the start of the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology.
• In 1909 Wilhelm L. Johannsen introduced the term gene to replace older terms like factor, trait, and character. He coined the terms phenotype and genotype, which are now used to indicate the appearance of the individual and its actual genetic makeup, respectively.
• Wilhelm Weinberg (1862—1937) and Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877 –1947) in 1908 independently formulated the Hardy-Weinberg principle of population genetics.
• Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866 – 1945), American zoologist and geneticist, famous for his experimental research with the fruit fly ( Drosophila ) by which he established the chromosome theory of heredity and also discovers the first sex-linked lethal gene.
• Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967) demonstrates that X-rays are mutagenic in Drosophila.
• In 1941 George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum proposes the one gene - one enzyme (polypeptide) concept.
• In 1944 Oswald Theodore Avery et al describe the DNA as the hereditary material.
• Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.”
• Har Gobind Khorana is an Indian-American molecular biologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize (shared with Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg) in 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
• The Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
  • In 1988 Project began with the goal of determining the entire sequence of DNA composing human chromosomes.
  • The project began in 1990 initially headed by James D. Watson at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
  • A working draft of the genome was released in 2000 and a complete one in 2003.