1665 | English physicist Robert Hooke (1635–1703) coins the word ‘cell’. |
1831 | Robert Brown discovers the nucleus in plant cells. |
1838 | German botanist Matthias Schleiden (1804–81) proposes that plants are composed of cells. |
1839 | Theodor Schwann states that animals are composed of cells and concludes that all living things are made up of cells. |
1846 | German botanist Hugo von Mohl (1805–72) coins the word ‘protoplasm’ for the living material of cells. |
1858 | German pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) postulates that all cells arise from other cells. |
1865 | German botanist Julius von Sachs (1832–97) discovers the chlorophyll-containing bodies in plant cells later named chloroplasts. |
1876–80 | German cytologist Eduard Strasburger (1844–1912) describes cell division in plants and states that new nuclei arise from division of existing nuclei. |
1882 | German cytologist Walther Flemming (1843–1905) describes the process of cell division in animal cells, for which he coins the term ‘mitosis’. Strasburger coins the words ‘cytoplasm’ and ‘nucleoplasm’. |
1886 | German biologist August Weismann (1834–1914) proposes his theory of the continuity of the germ plasm. |
1887 | Belgian cytologist Edouard van Beneden (1846–1910) discovers that the number of chromatin-containing threadlike bodies (subsequently named chromosomes) in the cells of a given species is always the same and that the sex cells contain half this number. |
1888 | German anatomist Heinrich von Waldeyer (1836–1921) coins the word ‘chromosome’. |
1898 | Camillo Golgi discovers the Golgi apparatus. |
1901 | US biologist Clarence McClung (1870–1946) discovers the sex chromosomes. |
1911 | Thomas Hunt Morgan produces the first chromosome map. |
1949 | Canadian geneticist Murray Barr (1908–95) discovers Barr bodies. |
1955 | Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve (1917–2013) discovers lysosomes and peroxisomes. |
1956 | Romanian-born US physiologist George Palade (1912–2008) discovers the role of microsomes (later renamed ribosomes). |
1957 | US biochemist Melvin Calvin (1911–97) publishes details of the photosynthetic carbon-fixation cycle (Calvin–Bassham–Benson cycle). |
1960–61 | South African-born British biochemist Sydney Brenner (1927– ) discovers messenger RNA, in conjunction with François Jacob (1920–2013) and Matthew S. Meselson (1930– ). |
1964 | US microbiologists Keith Porter and Thomas F. Roth discover the first cell receptors. |
1970 | US biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) proposes the endosymbiont theory for the origin of eukaryote cellular organelles. |
1971 | German-born US cell biologist Günter Blobel (1936–2018) proposes the signal hypothesis to explain how proteins are delivered to their correct destinations within cells. |
1975 | British biologists J. A. Lucy and E. C. Cocking achieve successful fusion of plant and animal cells. |
1979 | The first ‘test‐tube baby’, Louise Brown, is born in the UK using in vitro fertilization. |
1982 | British cell biologist Timothy Hunt (1943– ) discovers cyclins, proteins that control the cell cycle. |
| US neurologist Stanley Prusiner (1942– ) discovers prions. |
1983 | A mouse embryo is engineered to include the gene for human growth hormone, creating a ‘supermouse’. |
1984 | Sheep embryos are cloned for the first time. |
1986 | US cell biologist Robert Horvitz (1947– ) identifies genes involved in programmed cell death in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. First licence granted in USA for marketing a genetically engineered organism. |
1993 | First successful cloning of human embryos. |
1997 | Birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from adult body cells. |
1998 | Approval given in USA for therapeutic use of a synthetic skin containing live cultured human tissue cells. |
2000 | The embryo of a gaur, an endangered mammal, is cloned from skin cells of an adult and develops inside the womb of a cow. |
2002 | A pluripotent stem cell is isolated from adult human bone marrow. Discovery of new mechanism for regulating gene expression, called a riboswitch. |
2004 | World’s first bank for stem cells opens in north London. |
2005 | First cloned dog (an Afghan hound called Snuppy) is created, using somatic cell transfer, by Korean researchers led by Woo Suk Huang. |
2006 | Reprogramming of skin cells to form pluripotent stem cells achieved by a team headed by Shinya Yamanaka (joint winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 2012). |
2008 | Stem cells used to grow a new trachea for transplant. |
2010 | The world’s first ‘synthetic cell’ unveiled by the J. Craig Venter Institute; it is based on a bacterial cell containing an artificially constructed chromosome. |
2013 | Functional human liver tissue buds are derived from induced pluripotent human stem cells implanted into mice. |
2014 | Yeast cells engineered to synthesize opiates and semisynthetic opioids. |
2016 | ‘Artificial’ mouse eggs created from tissues cells are successfully fertilized and implanted in a surrogate mother to produce pups. |
2017 | Approval granted for first cancer therapy based on a patient’s own T cells, which are extracted and engineered to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) designed to target the patient’s specific tumour. The CAR T cells are then reintroduced to the patient to destroy the tumour cells. |