1833 | French chemist Anselme Payen (1795–1871) discovers diastase (the first enzyme to be discovered). |
1836 | Theodor Schwann discovers the digestive enzyme pepsin. |
c.1860 | Louis Pasteur demonstrates fermentation is caused by ‘ferments’ in yeasts and bacteria. |
1869 | German biochemist Johann Friedrich Miescher (1844–95) discovers nucleic acid. |
1877 | Pasteur’s ‘ferments’ are designated as enzymes. |
1890 | German chemist Emil Fischer (1852–1919) proposes the ‘lock-and-key’ mechanism to explain enzyme action. |
1901 | Japanese chemist Jokichi Takamine (1854–1922) isolates adrenaline (the first hormone to be isolated). |
1904 | British biologist Arthur Harden (1865–1940) discovers coenzymes. |
1909 | Russian-born US biochemist Phoebus Levene (1869–1940) identifies ribose in RNA. |
1921 | Canadian physiologist Frederick Banting (1891–1941) and US physiologist Charles Best (1899–1978) isolate insulin. |
1922 | Alexander Fleming discovers the enzyme lysozyme. |
1925 | Russian-born British biologist David Keilin (1887–1963) discovers cytochrome. |
1926 | US biochemist James Sumner (1877–1955) crystallizes urease (the first enzyme to be isolated). |
1929 | German chemist Hans Fischer (1881–1945) determines the structure of haem (in haemoglobin). |
| K. Lohman isolates ATP from muscle. |
1930 | US biochemist John Northrop (1891–1987) isolates the enzyme pepsin. |
1932 | Swedish biochemist Hugo Theorell (1903–82) isolates the muscle protein myoglobin. |
1937 | Hans Krebs discovers the Krebs cycle. |
1940 | German-born US biochemist Fritz Lipmann (1899–1986) proposes that ATP is the carrier of chemical energy in many cells. |
1943 | US biochemist Britton Chance (1913–2010) discovers how enzymes work (by forming an enzyme-substrate complex). |
1952 | US biologist Alfred Hershey (1908–97) proves that DNA carries genetic information. |
1953 | Francis Crick and James Watson discover the structure of DNA. |
1955 | Frederick Sanger discovers the amino acid sequence of insulin. |
1956 | US biochemist Arthur Kornberg (1918–2007) discovers DNA polymerase. |
| US molecular biologist Paul Berg (1926– ) identifies the nucleic acid later known as transfer RNA. |
1959 | Austrian-born British biochemist Max Perutz (1914–2002) determines the structure of haemoglobin. |
1960–61 | South African-born British molecular biologist Sydney Brenner (1927– ) and French biochemist François Jacob (1920–2013) discover messenger RNA. |
1961 | British biochemist Peter Mitchell (1920–92) proposes the chemiosmotic theory. |
| Brenner and Crick discover that the genetic code consists of a series of base triplets. |
1970 | US virologists Howard Temin (1934–94) and David Baltimore (1938– ) discover the enzyme reverse transcriptase. |
1970 | US molecular biologist Hamilton Smith (1931– ) discovers restriction enzymes. |
1973 | US biochemists Stanley N. Cohen (1935– ) and Herbert Boyer (1936– ) use restriction enzymes to produce recombinant DNA. |
1977 | Sanger determines the complete base sequence of DNA in bacteriophage φX174. |
1984 | British biochemist Alec Jeffreys (1950– ) devises DNA profiling. |
1985 | US biochemist Kary Mullis (1944–2019) invents the polymerase chain reaction for amplifying DNA. |
1986 | US pharmacologists Robert Furchgott (1916–2009) and Louis Ignarro (1941– ) demonstrate the importance of nitric oxide as a signal molecule in the blood vascular system. |
1988 | US biochemist Peter Agre (1949– ) identifies a water-channel protein (aquaporin) in the plasma membrane of cells. |
1998 | US biochemist Roderick MacKinnon (1956– ) reveals detailed three-dimensional structure of potassium-ion channel in brain cells. |
2001 | US molecular biologist Harry Noller and colleagues produce first detailed X-ray crystallographic image of a complete ribosome. |
2002 | First synthetic virus created by Eckard Wimmer and associates, based on human poliovirus. |
2004 | A team led by David L. Spector produces the first real-time imaging of gene transcription in a living cell, using different fluorescent markers to tag nucleic acids and proteins. |
2007 | Several research teams produce high-resolution crystal structures of the beta adrenoceptor, a G protein-coupled receptor with important roles in cell signalling. |
2011 | A high-resolution 3D crystal structure of photosystem II is published, showing for the first time the detail of the catalytic centre. |
2014 | E. coli bacteria engineered to incorporate two artificial nucleotides, X and Y, in their DNA. |
2015 | Discovery of teixobactin, one of a new class of antibiotics, using the iChip screening tool. |
2017 | Cryo-electron microscopy used to visualize cellular components, including protein complexes such as spliceosomes. |