Illustrations by: Presented by:

Gwyneth
History ofBalucio
Genet Gwyneth Balucio
From Mendel’s Pea Experiment to the Double Helix Structure of Nadine Ruth Nuelan
Watson and Crick 9-Newton

Genetics is the study of heredity, or how the

characteristics of living organisms are transmitted from
one generation to the next via DNA, the substance that
Note: The content for the comics
were taken from the file “Genetic
comprises genes, the basic unit of heredity.
Timeline.pdf” of the National https://www.jax.org/genetics-and-healthcare/genetics-and-genomics/the-difference-
.
Human Genome Institute. between-genetics-and-genomics

1865: Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk,

summarized his years of research on peas…

1869: Friedrich Miesher isolates DNA

from cells for the first time and calls
it

In 1879, Walter Flemming describes chromosome He stains chromosomes to observe them clearly
behaviour during animal cell division. and describes the whole process of mitosis in
1882.

1
 1900: Botanists DeVries, Correns, and von Tschermak independently
rediscover Mendel’s work while doing their own work on the laws of
inheritance.

I’M BACK

The increased 1902: Walter Sutton observed that the

understanding of segregation of chromosomes during
cells and meiosis matched the segregation
chromosomes at
pattern of Mendel’s
this time allowed
the placement of
Mendel’s abstract
ideas into a
physical context.

1902: Archibald Garrod observed that the alkaptonuria disease 1909: Wilhelm Johannsen
is inherited according to the Mendelian rules coins the word “gene” to
describe the Mendelian unit
of heredity…

1911: Thomas Hunt Morgan and his

students study fruit fly chromosomes.

…genotype and phenotype to

differentiate the genetic traits
They show that chromosomes carry of an individual and its
genes, and also discover genetic linkage. appearance.

2
1941: George Beadle and Edward Tatum’s experiments on the red bread mold,
Neurospora crassa, show that genes act by regulating distinct chemical events.

1943: William Astbury, a British scientist, obtains the first

X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA, which reveals that DNA
must have a regular periodic structure.

He suggests that nucleotide bases are stacked on top of

each other.

1944: Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty show that DNA (not proteins) can transform
the properties of cells…

…thus clarifying the chemical nature of genes

Which showed
that the genome
is more dynamic
than previously
thought. These
mobile gene
units are called
transposons.
1944: Barbara McClintock, using corn as the model organism,
discovers that genes can move around on chromosomes.
3
1952: Alfred Hershey & Martha
Chase show that only the DNA of
a virus needs to enter a
bacterium to infect it…

…providing strong support for the

idea that genes are made of DNA

1953: Francis H. Crick and

James D. Watson
described the double helix
structure of DNA.

They receive
the Nobel Prize for their work in 1962.