Here is a detailed academic timeline of the history of Mendelian inheritance, highlighting key milestones and their significance:
1856–1863: Gregor Mendel conducted hybridization experiments with pea plants (Pisum sativum) in the monastery garden in Brno. He observed patterns in the inheritance of traits, leading to the formulation of the principles of segregation and independent assortment, foundational concepts in classical genetics.
1865: Mendel presented his findings in a lecture titled “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” to the Natural History Society of Brno.
1866: The paper was published in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brno. Despite its significance, the work was largely ignored by the scientific community at the time.
1869: Friedrich Miescher isolated “nuclein” (later known as DNA) from the nuclei of white blood cells, marking the first identification of the substance that carries genetic information.
1900: Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak independently rediscovered Mendel’s work while conducting their own research on plant hybridization. This led to a renewed interest in Mendelian genetics.
1902: Walter Sutton observed that the behavior of chromosomes during meiosis mirrored Mendel’s laws of inheritance, leading to the formulation of the Chromosome Theory of Inheritance.
1905: William Bateson coined the term “genetics” to describe the study of heredity and variation, further establishing the field as a distinct scientific discipline.
1909: Wilhelm Johannsen introduced the terms “gene,” “genotype,” and “phenotype,” providing a framework for understanding the relationship between genetic makeup and observable traits.
1910: Thomas Hunt Morgan demonstrated that genes are located on chromosomes through his work with fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), providing experimental evidence for the Chromosome Theory of Inheritance.
1913: Alfred Sturtevant, a student of Morgan, created the first genetic linkage map, showing the relative positions of genes on a chromosome based on recombination frequencies.
1918: Ronald Fisher published a paper integrating Mendelian genetics with statistical methods, laying the foundation for the field of quantitative genetics
1944: Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty demonstrated that DNA is the substance responsible for heredity, confirming the molecular basis of Mendelian inheritance.
1953: James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the double-helix structure of DNA, explaining how genetic information is stored and replicated, and providing a molecular explanation for Mendel’s laws.
2003: The Human Genome Project was completed, providing a comprehensive map of all human genes and further enhancing the understanding of genetic inheritance patterns.
