Significant events of the last 125 years of microbiology
1861 Pasteur introduced the terms aerobic and anaerobic in describing the growth of yeast at the expense of sugar in the presence or absence of oxygen. He observed that more alcohol was produced in the absence of oxygen when sugar is fermented, which is now termed the Pasteur effect. |
1870 Thomas H. Huxley's Biogenesis and Abiogenesis address is the first clear statement of the basic outlines of modern Darwinian science on the question of the origin of life. The terms "biogenesis" (for life only from pre-existing life) and "abiogenesis" (for life from nonliving materials, what had previously been called spontaneous generation) as used by Huxley in this speech have become the standard terms for discussing the subject of how life originates. The speech offered powerful support for Pasteur's claim to have experimentally disproved spontaneous generation. The speech was also Huxley's attempt to define an orthodox Darwinian position on the question, and attempt to define as "non-Darwinian" all those Darwin supporters who believed that spontaneous generation up to the present day was an essential requirement of evolutionary science. Henry Charlton Bastian was the most prominent leader of that faction of Darwinians, though Huxley was so successful in defining them out of the story that very few people today even realize that there WERE Darwinians who were serious, talented evolutionary scientists, yet also thought abiogenesis was necessary in evolution up to the present day. |
1872 Ferdinand J. Cohn contributes to the founding of the science of bacteriology. In the publication Ueber Bakterien, he discusses the role of microorganisms in the cycling of elements in nature. In 1875, Cohn will publish an early classification of bacteria, using the genus name, Bacillus, for the first time. The German botanist Brefeld reported growing fungal colonies from single spores on gelatin surfaces. Prior to this innovation that resulted in the isolation of pure culture of microorganisms, pigmented bacterial colonies were isolated by the German biologist Schroeter on slices of potato incubated in a moist environment. |
1876 Robert Koch publishes a paper on his work with anthrax, pointing explicitly to a bacterium as the cause of this disease. This validates the germ theory of disease. Prior, in 1872, he was approved as a district medical officer in Poland where he discovered anthrax was endemic. His work on anthrax was presented and his papers on the subject were published under the auspices of Ferdinand Cohn. |
1877 Jean Jacques Theophile Schloesing proves that nitrification is a biological process in the soil by using chloroform vapors to inhibit the production of nitrate. One of the greatest practical applications of this knowledge was in the treatment of sewerage. Robert Koch dries films of bacteria, stains them with methylene blue and then photographs them. He uses cover slips to prepare permanent visual records. John Tyndall publishes his method for fractional sterilization and clarifies the role of heat resistant factors (spores) in putrefaction. Tyndall’s conclusion adds a final footnote to the work of Pasteur and others in proving that spontaneous generation is impossible. |
1878 Thomas Burrill demonstrates for the first time a bacterial disease of plants; Micrococcus amylophorous causes pear blight. Joseph Lister publishes his study of lactic fermentation of milk, demonstrating the specific cause of milk souring. His research is conducted using the first method developed for isolating a pure culture of a bacterium, which he names Bacterium lactis. Serious attention to the trypanosomes of mammals was drawn by the work of Timothy Lewis on the parasite of Indian rats (Trypanosoma lewisi), the importance of which was realized after George Evans (1880) discovered the pathogenic trypanosome in horses and camels in India (Trypanosoma evansi) |
1879 Albert Neisser identifies Neisseria gonorrhoeoe, the pathogen that causes gonorrhea. He may be the first to attribute a chronic disease to a microbe. |
1880 Louis Pasteur develops a method of attenuating a virulent pathogen, the agent of chicken cholera, so it would immunize and not cause disease. This is the conceptual break-though for establishing protection against disease by the inoculation of a weakened strain of the causative agent. Pasteur uses the word "attenuated" to mean weakened. As Pasteur acknowledged, the concept came from Jenner’s success at smallpox vaccination. C. L. Alphonse Laveran finds malarial parasites in erythrocytes of infected individuals and shows that the parasite enters the organism and replicates. Laveran was awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1907 |
1881 Robert Koch struggles with the disadvantages of using liquid media for certain experiments. He seeks out alternatives, and first uses an aseptically cut slice of a potato as a solid culture medium. He also turns to gelatin, which is added to culture media; the resulting mixture is poured onto flat glass plates and allowed to gel. The plate technique is used to isolate pure cultures of bacteria from colonies growing on the surface of the plate. Koch publishes his Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms in which he describes his success with solidified culture media. Paul Ehrlich refines the use of the dye methylene blue in bacteriological staining and uses it to stain the tubercule bacillus. He shows the dye binds to the bacterium and resists decoloration with an acid alcohol wash. Koch systematically investigated the efficacy of chemical disinfectants demonstrating that carbolic acid used by Lister in aseptic surgery was merely bacteriostatic and not bactericidal. He first recognized that disinfection depended on the chemical concentration and contact time. Anthrax spores were dried on silk threads, exposed to disinfectants, washed with sterile water and cultured to evaluate a range of chemicals. |
1882 Angelina Fannie and Walther Hesse in Koch?s laboratory use agar, an extract of algae, as a solidifying agent to prepare solid media for growing microbes. Fannie suggests the use of agar-agar after leanring of it from friends who cook. Agar replaces gelatin because it remains solid at temperatures up to 100 degrees centigrade, it is clear, and it resists digestion by bacterial enzymes. Robert Koch isolates the tubercule bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The search for the tubercule bacillus is more difficult that anthrax. He finally isolates the bacillus from the tissues of a workman and stains them with methylene blue, yielding blue colored rods with bends and curves. He injects the tissues from people who had died into animals and then grows the bacilli he isolates into pure cultures. |
1883 Edward Theodore Klebs and Fredrich Loeffler independently discover Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which causes diphtheria. Loeffler later shows that the bacterium secretes a soluble substance that affects organs beyond sites where there is physical evidence of the organism. Ulysse Gayon and Gabriel Dupetit isolate in pure culture two strains of denitrifying bacteria. They show that individual organic compounds, such as sugars and alcohols, can replace complex organics and serve as reductants for nitrate, as well as serving as carbon sources. |
1884 Ilya Ilich Metchnikoff demonstrates that certain body cells move to damaged areas of the body where they consume bacteria and other foreign particles. He calls the process phagocytosis. He proposes a theory of cellular immunity. With Ehrlich, Metchnikoff is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1908. Centennial of the Rise of Cellular Immunology: Discovery at Messina, ASM News 48, 1982. p.558 [PDF] Robert Koch puts forth what will become his best-known work, a set of postulates, or standards of proof involving the tubercle bacillus. Koch's postulates are published in a work titled the The Etiology of Tuberculosis. The paper includes a demonstration of three major facts: 1) the presence of the tubercule bacillus (as proved by staining) in tubercular lesions of various organs of humans and animals, 2) the cultivation of the organisms in pure culture on blood serum, and 3) the production of tuberculosis at will by its inoculation into guinea pis. Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1905. Hans Christian J. Gram develops a dye system for identifying bacteria [the Gram stain]. Bacteria which retain the violet dye are classified as gram-positive. The distinction in staining is later correlated with other biochemical and morphological differences. Together with Pasteur, the French firm Chamberland’s Autoclave, develops a chamber to sterilize materials using superheated steam. |
1885 As part of his rabies research, Louis Pasteur oversees injections of the child Joseph Meister with "aged" spinal cord allegedly infected with rabies virus. Pasteur uses the term "virus" meaning poison, but has no idea of the nature of the causitive organism. Although the treatment is successful, the experiment itself is an ethical violation of research standards. Pasteur knew he was giving the child successively more dangerous portions. Paul Ehrlich espouses the theory that certain chemicals, such as dyes, affect bacterial cells and reasoned that these chemicals could be toxic against microbes, work that lays the foundation for his development of arsenic as a treatment for syphilis. Theodor Escherich identifies a bacterium, that is a natural inhabitant of the human gut, which he names Bacterium coli. He shows that certain strains are responsible for infant diarrhea and gastroenteritis. |
1886 Theobald Smith and D. E. Salmon inject heated killed whole cell vaccine of hog cholera into pigeons and demonstrate immunity to subsequent administration of a live microbial culture. The organism is a bacterium and unrelated to hog cholera or swine plague disease, which is caused by a virus. |
1887 Sergei Winogradsky studies Beggiatoa and determines that it can use inorganic H2S as an energy source and CO2 as a carbon source. He establishes the concept of autotrophy and its relationship to natural cycles. Julius Richard Petri working in Koch’s laboratory, introduces a new type of culture dish for semi-solid media. The dish has an overhanging lid that keeps contaminants out. |
1888 The Institut Pasteur is founded in France in November. Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin show that Cornyebacterium diphtheriae affects tissues and organs by a toxin. They use a filtrate from cells that can directly kill laboratory animals. Martinus Beijerinck uses enrichment culture, minus nitrogenous compounds, to obtain a pure culture of the root nodule bacterium Rhizobium, demonstrating that enrichment culture creates the conditions for optimal growth of a desired bacterium. Hellriegel and Wilfarth describe symbiotic nitrogen fixation by nodulated legumes. Hellriegel first reported this to a scientific meeting in September 1886, and published a somewhat more extensive paper a few weeks later. The 1888 publication with Wilfarth is considered to be "the classical paper." |
1889 A. Charrin and J. Roger discover that bacteria can be agglutinated by serum. Kitasato obtained the first pure culture of the strict anaerobic pathogen, the tetanus bacillus Clostridium tetani. Taking advantage of the fact that the spores of the organism are extremely heat-resistant, he heated a mixed culture of C. tetani and other bacteria at 80 degrees for one hour, then cultivated them in a hydrogen atmosphere. |
1890 Emil von Behring and Shibasaburo Kitasato working together in Berlin in 1890 announce the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin serum, the first rational approach to therapy of infectious diseases. They inject a sublethal dose of diphtheria filtrate into animals and produce a serum that is specifically capable of neutralizing the toxin. They then inject the antitoxin serum into an uninfected animal to prevent a subsequent infection. Behring, trained as a surgeon, was a researcher for Koch. Kitasato was Koch’s first student at the Institute of Hygiene. Behring was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1901 Sergei Winogradsky succeeds in isolating nitrifying bacteria from soil. During the period 1890-1891, Winogradsky performs the major definitive work on the organisms responsible for the process of nitrification in nature. |
1891 Paul Ehrlich proposes that antibodies are responsible for immunity. He shows that antibodies form against the plant toxins ricin and abrin. With Metchnikoff, Ehrlich is jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1908. |
1892 Dmitri Ivanowski publishes the first evidence of the filterability of a pathogenic agent, the virus of tobacco mosaic disease, launching the field of virology. He passes the agent through candle filters that retain bacteria but isn't sure that he has identified a new region. William Welch and George Nuttall identify Clostridium perfringens, the organism responsible for causing gangrene. |
1893 Theobald Smith and F.L. Kilbourne establish that ticks carry Babesia microti, which causes babesiosis in animals and humans. This is the first account of a zoonotic disease and also the foundation of all later work on the animal host and the arthropod vector. |
1894 Richard Pfeiffer observes that a heat stable toxic material bound to the membrane of Vibrio Cholerae is released only after the cells are disintegrated. He calls the material endotoxin, to distinguish it from filterable material released by bacteria. Alexandre Yersin isolates Yersinia (Pasteurella) pestis, the organism that is responsible for bubonic plague. Shibasaburo Kitasato also observes the bacterium in cases of plague Martinus Beijerinck isolates the first sulfate-reducing bacterium, Spirillum desulfuricans (Desulfovibrio desulfuricans). |
1895 Sergei Winogradsky isolates the first free-living nitrogen-fixing organism, Clostridum pasteurianum. David Bruce describes in great detail the Tsetse fly disease (Nagana - means loss of spirits, depression, in Zulu) in Zululand. He also describes the parasite (drawings of tryp and of tsetse) and demonstrates transmission by infected blood or fly bite. |
1896 Max Gruber and Herbert Durham extend the 1889 observation of Charrin and Roger to show the agglutination of bacteria by serum is specific. This was recognized as a new disease diagnostic tool. |
1897 Paul Ehrlich proposes his "side-chain" theory of immunity and develops standards for toxin and antitoxin. Edward Buchner helps launch the field of enzymology by publishing the first evidence of a cell-free fermentation process using extracts isolated from yeast. This discovery refutes Pasteur’s claim that fermentation requires the repsence of live cells. Buchner is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1907. Waldemar Haffkine produces immunity against the plague with killed organisms. Almwroth Wright and David Sample develop an effective vaccine with killed cells of Salmonella typhi to prevent typhoid fever. |
1898 Friedrich Loeffler and Paul Frosch prove that foot-and-mouth disease in livestock is caused by organisms tiny enough to pass through bacteriological filters and too small to be seen through a light microscope. Jules Bordet discovers that hemolytic sera acts on foreign blood in a manner similar to the action of antimicrobic sera on microbes by precipitating the material from solution. He shows there are two factors, a heat-labile substance found in normal blood and a bacteriocidal material present in the blood of immunized animals.Bordet is awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and Physiology in 1919. B. R. Schenck presents the first unequivocal case of sporotrichosis and includes a description of the organism that was first isolated from the patient. This organism was later named Sporotrichum schenckii. |
1899 Ronald Ross shows that the malarial parasite undergoes a cycle of development in mosquitoes and that the disease is transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes. Ross was awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1902. Martinus Beijerinck recognizes "soluble" living microbes, a term he applies to the discovery of tobacco mosaic virus. A filtrate free of bacteria retains ability to cause disease in plants even after repeated dilutions.In 1897 he had pressed the juice from tobacco leaves infected with tobacco mosaic disease, which gave the leaves a mottled appearance. The organizing meeting of the Society of American Bacteriologists is held at Yale, December 28, 1899. The Society is the first independent organization devoted to the promotion and service of bacteriology in the United States. It later becomes the American Society for Microbiology. |
1900 Based on work of Walter Reed, it is demonstrated that Yellow Fever is caused by a filterable virus transmitted by mosquitoes. The agent is similar to that reported in 1898 by Loffler and Frosch for foot and mouth disease of cattle. This is the first report of a viral agent known to cause human disease. Based on the findings of the Yellow Fever Commission the mosquito was eradicated. W. Ophuls and H. C. Moffitt correctly identify the etiologic agent of coccidioidomycosis, Coccidiodes immitis, as a mold. This was formerly described as a protozoan. |
1901 Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou develop the complement fixation test. They show that any antigen-antibody reaction leads to the binding of complement to the target antigen. E. Wildiers publishes the first description of a microbial growth factor, opening the field of vitamin research. He finds that a water soluble extract of yeast has a compund that is required for the growth of yeast. The material is later found to be a B vitamin. |
1903 William Leishman observes Leishmania donovani in the spleen of a soldier who dies from Dum-Dum fever. Charles Donovan helps to identify the protozoan causing the disease. F. G. Novy cultivates trypanosomes isolated in the blood of rats. |
1904 Martinus Beijerinck obtains the first pure culture of sulfur-oxidizing bacterium, Thiobacillus denitrificans. Under anaerobic conditions it uses carbon dioxide as a source of carbon. Cornelius Johan Koning suggests that fungi play an important role in the decomposition of organic matter and the formation of humus. |
1905 Franz Schardinger isolates aerobic bacilli which produce acetone, ethanol, and acetic acid. These are important industrial chemicals. Fritz R. Schaudinn and Erich Hoffman identify Treponema pallidum, the cause of syphilis. The bacterium is isolated from fluid leaking from a syphylitic chancre and is spiral in appearance. Shigetane Ishiwata discovers that the cause of a disease outbreak in silkworms is a new species of bacteria, later called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Ishiwata called the organism "Sotto-Bacillen." ("Sotto" in Japanese signifies sudden collapse.) Sir Roland Biffen shows that the ability of wheat to resist infection with a fungus is genetically inherited. |
1906 August von Wasserman describes the "Wasserman reaction" for the diagnosis of syphilis in monkeys. The test uses complement fixation and becomes the basis for the general uses of complement tests as diagnostics. N. L. Sohngen presents groundbreaking work on methane-using and methane-producing bacteria. This is the first proof that methane can serve as an energy and carbon source. A newly appointed pathologist in the Panama Canal Zone, Samuel Darling, performs an autopsy on a patient with a disease resembling tuberculosis and an agent resembling Leishmania sp. He recognizes significant differences between the etiologic agent and Leishmania sp., and names the organism Histoplasma capsulatum, believing that it is a protozoan. It is now known to be a fungus. |
1907 Erwin Smith and C.O. Townsend discover that the cause of crown galls is a bacterium called Agrobacterium tumefaciens. |
1909 Howard Ricketts shows that Rocky Mountain spotted fever is caused by an organism that is intermediate in size between an virus and a bacterium. This organism, Rickettsia, is transmitted by ticks. Ricketts dies from typhus, another rickettsial disease, in 1910. Sigurd Orla-Jensen proposes that physiological characteristics of bacteria are of primary importance in their classification. A primary example is a monograph he later publishes on lactic acid bacteria that establishes the criteria for assignment. Carlos Chagas discovers the trypanosome, which he named Trypanosoma cruzi, and its mode of transmission, via reduviid bugs, as the cause of the disease named for him. |
1910 Charles Henry Nicolle demonstrates that typhus is transmitted from person to person by the body louse. This information was used in both world wars to reduce the incidence of typhus. Nicolle is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1928. Raimond Sabouraud summarizes about twenty years of his systematic and scientific studies of dermatophytes and dermatophytoses in a classic treatise, Les Teinges. He introduces a medium for the growth of pathogenic fungi. |
1911 Francis Peyton Rous discovers a virus that can cause cancer in chickens by injecting a cell free filtrate of tumors. This is the first experimental proof of an infectious etiologic agent of cancer. In 1909 a farmer brought Rous a hen that had a breast tumor. Rous performed autopsy, extracted tumor cells and injected them in other hens, where sarcoma developed. Rous is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1966. Rous, Peyton. 1911. Transmission of a malignant growth by means of a cell free filtrate. JAMA. 56: 198. |
1912 Paul Ehrlich announces the discovery of an effective cure (Salvarsan) for syphilis, the first specific chemotherapeutic agent for a bacterial disease. Ehrlich was a researcher in Koch’s lab, where he worked on immunology. In 1906 he became head of the Research Institute for Chemotherapy. He sought an arsenic derivative. The 606th compound worked. He brought news of the treatment to London, where Fleming became one of the few physicians to administer it. |
1915 The first discovery of bacteriophage, by Frederick Twort. Twort’s discovery was something of an accident. He had spent several years growing viruses and noticed that the bacteria infecting his plates became transparent. Chaim Weizmann, using the knowledge of Pasteur’s discovery that yeast ferments sugar, uses Clostridium acetobutylicum to produce acetone and butyl alcohol. These were essential to the British munitions program during World War I. McCrady establishes a quantitative approach for analyzing water samples for coliforms using the most probable number, multiple-tube fermentation test. The test is based on the ability of coliforms to grow in selective broth at 35=F8C producing acid or gas within 24 to 48 hours. The number of coliforms and the 95% confidence limit can be determined using MPN tables for the volumes and number of fermentation tubes used. |
1917 Felix d'Herrelle independently describes bacterial viruses and coins the name "bacteriophage." |
1918 Alice Evans establishes that members of the genus Brucella. are responsible for the diseases of Malta Fever, cattle abortion, and swine abortion. She reports that the bacteria are bacilli and not micrococci. |
1919 Theobald Smith and M. S. Taylor describe the microbe, Vibrio fetus n. sp., responsible for fetal membrane disease in cattle. James Brown uses blood agar as a medium to study the hemolytic reactions for the genus Streptococcus and divides it into three types, alpha, beta, and gamma. |
1920 The SAB committee presents a report on the Characterization and classification of Bacterial Types that becomes the basis for the classic work of D. H. Bergey, in 1923. |
1923 Michael Heidelberger and O. A. Avery show that carbohydrates from the pneumococcus can serve as virulence antigens and are serologically specific. This overturns the current wisdom that only proteins or glycoproteins are antigenic. |
1924 George and Gladys Dick describe the "Dick test", a skin test for scarlet fever. They purify a soluble extoxin from hemolytic Streptococccus pyogenes and use it as a diagnostic. They use Koch’s postulates to show that scarlet fever is caused by streptocoocci, recover the bacteria from all cases of the disease and infect others with cultures of the bacterium. Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin introduce a living non-virulent strain of tuberculosis (BCG) to immunize against the disease. This is the result of work begun in 1906 on attenuating a strain of bovine tuberculosis bacillus. More than 200 subcultures were grown before the resulting strain was tested. Albert Jan Kluyver publishes an article "Unity and Diversity in the Metabolism of Micro-organisms" that demonstrates common metabolic events occur in different microbes. The processes he refers to are oxidation, fermentation and biosynthesis. Klyuver also points out that life on earth without microbes would not be possible. |
1926 Thomas Rivers distinguishes between bacteria and viruses, establishing virology as a separate area of study. This paper was published after he presented it at an SAB meeting held in December of 1926. Albert Jan Kluyver and Hendrick Jean Louis Donker propose a universal model for metabolic events in cells based on a transfer of hydrogen atoms. The model applies to aerobic and anaerobic organisms. Everitt Murray isolates from rabbits a bacterium that is responsible for listeriosis in man. The organism can grow at low temperatures and frequently is found in food. He names it Bacterium monocytogenes. It is later renamed Listeria monocytogenes. |
1928 Frederick Griffith discovers transformation in bacteria and establishes the foundation of molecular genetics. He shows that injecting mice with a mixture of live, avirulent, rough Streptococcus pneumoniae Type I and heat-killed, virulent smooth S. pneumoniae Type II, leads to the death of the mice. Live, virulent, smooth S. pneumoniae Type II are isolated from the dead mice. Not until the 1930’s, did Avery, Macleod and McCarty take up Griffith’s work and try to explain the results. |
1929 Alexander Fleming publishes the first paper describing penicillin and its effect on gram positive microorganisms. This finding is unique since it is a rare example of bacterial lysis and not just microbial antagonism brought on by the mold Penicillium. Fleming kept his cultures 2-3 weeks before discarding them. When he looked at one set he noticed that the staphylococcus bacteria seemed to be dissolving. The mold that contaminated the culture was a rare organism called penicillium. He left the culture on the lab bench and went on vacation. While he was away the culture was subjected to a cold spell followed by a warm one – the only conditions under which the discovery could be made. When penicillin is finally produced in major quantities in the 1940s, its power and availability effectively launch the "Antibiotics Era," a major revolution in public health and medicine. With Florey and Chain, Fleming is awarded the Noble prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1945. |
1930 Henning Karstrom begins to identify the phenomena of enzyme adaptation and of constitutive synthesis, in which synthesis of an enzyme either is increased in response to the presence of the substrate of the environment or is independent of the growth medium. His work is based on studies of carbohydrate metabolism in Gram negative enteric bacteria. |
1931 Rene Dubos working with Oswald Avery discovers Bacillus brevis, an organism that breaks down the capsular polysaccharide of Type III S. pneumocci and protects mice against pneumonia. C. B. van Niel shows that photosynthetic bacteria use reduced compounds as electron donors without producing oxygen. Sulfur bacteria use H2S as a source of electrons for the fixation of carbon dioxide. He posits that plants use water as a source and release oxygen.At this time Van Niel begins the first independent ?general microbiology? course at the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California. Margaret Pittman identifies variation, such as encapsulated forms, and type specificity, such as type b, of the Haemophilus influenzae as determinants of pathogenicity. Pittman, M. 1931. Variation and type specificity in the bacterial species Haemophilus influenzae. J. Exp. Med. 53: 471-492. William Joseph Elford discovers that viruses range in size from large protein molecules to tiny bacteria. Elford, W. J. 1931. A new series of graded colloidal membranes suitable for general bacteriological use, especially in filterable virus studies. J. Pathol Bacteriol. 34: 505-521. Alice Woodruff and Ernest Goodpasture devise a technique of cultivating viruses in eggs. Woodruff, A. and E. Goodpasture. 1931. The susceptibility of the chorio-allantoic membrane of chick embryos to infection with the fowl-pox virus. Am. J. Path. 7: 209-222. |
1932 R. Stewart and K. Meyer describe the isolation of Coccidiodes immitis from soil located near where several patients were thought to have become infected. This establishes that the soil is a reservoir for the fungus. Stewart, R. A. and K. F. Meyer. 1932. Isolation of Coccidiodes immitis (Stiles) from the soil. Proc. Soc. Exper. Biol. & Med. 29: 937-938. |
1933 Rebecca Lancefield describes a method of producing streptococcal antigens and sera for use in precipitin tests and suggests that this approach can be used epidemiologically to identify the probable origin of a given strain. Rebecca Craighill Lancefield, Pioneer Microbiologist, ASM News. 41,1975. p.805 [PDF] Lancefield, R. C. 1933. A serological differentiation of human and other groups of hemolytic streptococci. J. Exper. Med. 57: 571-595. |
1934 Ladislaus Laszlo Marton is the first to examine biological specimans with the electron microscope, which achieves magnifications of 200-300, 000x. Later in 1937, he publishes the first electron micrographs of bacteria. Marton, L. 1934. La microscopie electronique des onjectes biologiques. Bull. Acad. Belg. Cl. Sci. 20: 439-466. Alice Evans accomplishes the first typing of a strain of bacteria with bacteriophage. Evans, A. 1934. Streptococcus bacteriophage: A study of four serological types. Public Health Rep. 49: 1386-1401. William de Monbreun describes the dimorphic nature of Histoplasma capsulatum after being surprised by the growth of a mold from patient tissues displaying yeasts. de Monbreun, W. A. 1934. The cultivation and cultural characteristics of Darling’s Histoplasma capsulatum. Am. Jour. Trop. Med. 14: 93-125. |
1935 Gerhard J. Domagk uses a chemically synthesized antimetabolite, Prontosil, to kill Streptococcus in mice. It is later shown that Prontosil is hydrolyzed in vivo to an active compound, sulfanilamide. One of the first patients to be treated with Protonsil was Domagk’s daughter who had a streptococcal infection that was unresponsive to other treatments. When she was near death, she was injected with large quantities of Protonsil and she made a dramatic recovery. Domagk is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1939 Domagk, G. J. 1935. Ein Beitrag zur Chemotherapie der bakteriellen infektionen. Dtsch. med. Wochenschr. 61: 250-253. In Milestones in Microbiology: 1556 to 1940, translated and edited by Thomas D. Brock, ASM Press. 1998, p195 [PDF] Wendell Stanley crystallizes tobacco mosaic virus and shows it remains infectious. However, he does not recognize that the infectious material is nucleic acid and not protein. Together with Northrop and Sumner, Stanley is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 Stanley, W. 1935. Isolation of a crystalline protein possessing the properties of tobacco-mosaic virus. Science. 81: 644-654.In Milestones in Microbiology: 1556 to 1940, translated and edited by Thomas D. Brock, ASM Press. 1998, p160 [PDF] William A. Hinton, chief of the Wasserman laboratory at Harvard, publishes the first major text on syphilis, Syphilis and its Treatment, which includes reference to the Davies-Hinton test to detect syphilis in spinal fluids. |
1936 J. D. Bernal, F. C. Bauden, N. W, Pirie, and I. Pankuchen demonstrate that isolated preparations of tobacco mosaic virus contain phosphorus as a component of a phospho-ribonucleic acid. They also isolate ribonucleic acids.this challenges the claim by Stanley that the TMV is composed only of protein Bauden, F. C. , N. W. Pirie, J. D. Bernal, and I. Fankuchen. 1936. Liquid crystalline substances from virus infected plants. Nature 138:1051-1052. Harland Wood and Chester Werkman show that CO2 is consumed by Propionibacterium arabinosum duirng the fermentation of glycerol. This is the first report of carbon dioxide fixation by a heterotrophic bacterium. H.G. Wood and C.H. Werkman. 1936. The utilization of CO2 in the dissimilation of glycerol by propionic acid bacteria. Biochem. J. 30:48-53. In Microbiology: A Centenary Perspective, edited by Wolfgang K. Joklik, ASM Press. 1999, p.202 [PDF] |
1938 Field tests of Max Theiler’s vaccine against yellow fever prove successful. The vaccine is based on a mouse passaged virus. The Rockefeller Foundation manufactures more than 28 million doses by 1947. Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1951. |
1939 E. L. Ellis and Max Delbruck establish the concept of the one-step viral growth cycle for a bacteriophage active against E. coli. |
1940 Pathologist Howard Florey and biochemist Ernest Chain produce an extract of penicillin, the first powerful antibiotic. They isolate the antibiotic from Fleming’s mold cultures and demonstrate that it can cure infections in animals. Florey and Chain began their research by focusing on the discovery by Fleming of lysozyme. In the course of reviewing Fleming’s papers, Chain read the description of penicillin. With Fleming, Florey and Chain are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1945. Ernest Chain and E.P. Abraham describe a sustance from E. coli that can inactivate penicillin. It was the first bacterial product that was recognized to mediate resistance to an antibacterial agent. Helmuth Ruska uses an electron microscope to obtain the first pictures of a virus. Charles E. Smith and his colleagues demonstrate the usefulness of a tuberculin-like preparation of Coccidiodes immitis in detecting prior exposure to the fungus. This preparation allowed for the delineation of the endemic area for the fungus. Donald O. Woods describes the relation of para-aminobenzoic acid to the mechanism of action of sulfanilamide, which was used by Domagk to treat Streptococcal infections in mice. Selman Waksman and H. Boyd Woodruff discover actinomycin, the first antibiotic obtained pure from an actinomycete, leading to the discovery of many other antibiotics from that group of microorganisms. After Renee Dubos discovered two antibacterial substances in soil, Waksman decided to focus on the medicinal uses of antibacterial soil microbes. |
1941 George Beadle and Edward Tatum jointly publish a paper on their experiments using the fungus Neurospora crassa to establish that particular genes are expressed through the action of correspondingly specific enzymes. The first gene to be identified controlled the synthesis of an enzyme in a series that led to generation of niacin. This report is the genesis of the "one gene-one enzyme" concept. They chose Neurospora because it grew and reproduces quickly. They grew Neurospora on a culture medium that contained nutrients essential to its growth and then irradiated the colonies with x-rays. Some colonies that grew but failed to thrive. Only after adding vitamin B6 did the irradiated organisms begin to grow normally. By mating the defective organisms with normal organisms they showed the defect was inherited as a Mendelian recessive gene. With Lederberg, Beadle and Tatum are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1958. Charles Fletcher first demonstrates that penicillin is non-toxic to human volunteers, by injecting a police officer suffering with a lethal infection. George Hirst demonstrates that influenza virus agglutinates red blood cells. Since the cell attachment proteins of most viruses also agglutinate red blood cells, this property provides a rapid, accurate and quantitative method of counting virus particles. |
1942 Selman Waksman suggests the word "antibiotic" (coined in 1889 by P. Vuillemin) after Dr. J. E. Flynn, the editor of Biological Abstracts asked him to suggest a term for chemical substances, including compounds and preparations that are produced by microbes and have antimicrobial properties. Although there is no journal citation, Waksman recalled the incident in his book The Antibiotic Era. Because the word was accepted quickly and the meaning became confused, Waksman published a comprehensive definition in 1947: "an antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by microbes that inhibits the growth of and even destroys other microbes (and is active in dilute solutions)" was added later. Albert H. Coons, H.J. Creech, R.N. Jones, and E. Berliner use a fluorescent antibody to find antigens of pneumococci in human tissue. They chemically bind a fluorescent group to antipneumococcus type III antibody and use a fluorescence microscope to locate the antibody in histologic sections. They also provided some basic data on sensitivity and specificity. Thomas Anderson and Salvador Luria photograph bacteriophages with the aid of an electron microscope, confirming earlier work by Ruska. They demonstrate that an E. coli T2 phage has a head and a tail. Jules Freund and Katherine McDermott identify adjuvants, such as paraffin oil, that can significantly boost antibody production. The preparation is composed of heat killed tubercule bacilli in a water-in-oil emulsion. |
1943 Salvador Luria and Max Delbruck provide a statistical demonstration that inheritance in bacteria follows Darwinian principles. Particular mutants, such as viral resistance, occur randomly in bacterial populations, even in the absence of the virus. More importantly, they occur in small numbers in some populations and in large numbers in other cultures. The results, known as fluctuation analysis, show that resistance occurs before exposure to the phage and argues against the adaptation hypothesis of mutations. With Delbruck and Hershey, Luria is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1969. R. E. Hungate describes an anaerobic cellulose digesting bacterium in cattle. |
1944 W. H. Feldman and H. C. Hinshaw at the Mayo Clinic are the first to demonstrate successful treatment of tuberculosis with streptomycin. Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty show that DNA is the transforming material in cells. They use the observations of Griffith and show the transformation of Streptococcus pneumoniae from an avirulent phenotype to a virulent phenotype is the result of the transfer of DNA from dead smooth organisms to live rough ones. They also show that the transforming principle is destroyed by pancreatic deoxyribonuclease, which hydrolyzes DNA, but is not affected by pancreatic ribonuclease or proteolytic enzymes. Macleod was Avery’s research assistant until 1941. By the time he left, he and Avery suspected that the vital substance in bacterial transformation was DNA. McCarty confirmed their hypothesis. Albert Schatz, E. Bugie, and Selman Waksman discover streptomycin, soon to be used against tuberculosis. Streptomycin has the same specific antibiotic effect against gram negative microorganisms as penicillin does on gram positives. Waksman is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1952. |
1945 Salvador Luria and Alfred Day Hershey demonstrate that bacteriophages mutate, thereby making it difficult to develop immunity to such things as flu and colds. They also introduce criteria for distinguishing mutations from other modifications. With Delbruck and Luria, Hershey is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1969. Colin MacLeod, Richard Hodges, Michael Heidelberger, and William Bernard show that an isolated capsular polysaccharide can immunize against Nesseria meningtitis. The vaccine is finally approved in 1977 after extensive international testing. |
1946
Joshua Lederberg and Edward L. Tatum publish on conjugation in bacteria. The proof is based on the generation of daughter cells able to grow in media that cannot support growth of either of the parent cells. Their experiments showed that this type of gene exchange requires direct contact between bacteria. At the time Lederberg began studying with Tatum, scientists believed that bacteria reproduced asexually, but from the work of Beadle and Tatum, Lederberg knew that fungi reproduced sexually and he suspected that bacteria did as well. |
1947 Armin Braun shows that A. tumefaciens introduces a factor into plant cells that permanently transforms them into cancer cells. |
1948 Mary Shorb’s Lactobacillus lactis assay is employed at Merck & Co. to guide purification and crystallization of vitamin B12 from Streptomyces griseus culture. B12 is applied to the treatment of pernicious anemia in man, and as the animal protein factor, the promotion of growth in farm animals. |
1949 Microbiologist John Franklin Enders, virologist Thomas H. Weller and physician Frederick Chapman Robbins together develop a technique to grow polio virus in test tube cultures of human tissues. This approach gave virologists a practical tool for the isolation and study of viruses. . Enders, Weller, and Robbins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1954. Medical mycologist Chester Emmons confirms what many had suspected, that Histoplasma capsulatum resides in soil, by culturing the organism from rat burrows. |
1950 Robert Hungate publishes a description of the roll-tube culture technique, which permits culturing anaerobes. The procedure eliminates oxygen by underlaying with it with carbon dioxide and then introducing agar. This is a key advance in studying anaerobic bacteria from cow rumen. Andre Lwoff and Louis Siminovitch demonstrate that irradiation with ultra-violet light terminates the lysogenic state in bacteria and permits bacteriophage to replicate and then lyse the host cell. This opens the field of lysogeny to molecular analysis. With Jacob and Monod, Lwoff is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1965. |
1952 Joshua Lederberg and Esther Lederberg publish their replica plating method and provide firm evidence that mutations in bacteria yielding resistance to antibiotics and viruses are not induced by the presence of selective agents. Replica plating or transfer of specific physical isolates allows for rapid screening of large numbers of genetic markers. With Beadle and Tatum, J. Lederberg is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1958. Joshua Lederberg uses the term plasmid to describe extranuclear genetic elements that replicate autonomously. Joshua Lederberg and Norton Zinder report on transduction, or transfer of genetic information by viruses. They show that a phage of Salmonella typhimurium can carry DNA from one bacterium to another. Renato Dulbecco shows that single particles of an animal virus can produce plaques. With Baltimore and Temin, Dulbecco is awarded the Nobel Prize in Mediicne and Physiology in 1975. Marvin Bryant isolates spirochetes from cattle rumen. Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase suggest that only DNA is needed for viral replication. They use radioactive isotopes 35S to track protein and 32P to track DNA and show that progeny T2 bacteriophage isolated from lysed bacterial cells have the labeled nucleic acid. Further, most of the labeled protein doesn’t enter the cells but remains attached to the bacterial cell membrane. Salvador Luria and Mary Human, and independently Jean Weigle, describe a non-genetic heritable variation in bacteriophage imposed on the host in which it was grown. They call this phenomenon host-controlled modification and note that the incorrectly modified phage are "restricted" in the inappropriate host. This later leads to study of bacterial systems of restriction and modification, and eventually the discovery of restriction endonucleases. William Hayes proposes that bacterial conjugation involves the unidirectional transfer of genes from a donor to a recipient cell. Until then, most microbiologists believed that there was either a fusion of cells or an exchange of genetic information. Contemporaneous with Cavalli, Lederberg, and Lederberg, he also shows that a fertility factor, F, a non-chromosomal plasmid, is present only in donor cells. James T. Park and Jack L. Strominger conclude that penicillin acts by inhibiting murein synthesis in the cell wall. This is the first discovery of the mode of action of a natural antibiotic. |
1953 Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, together with James Watson, describe the double-helix structure of DNA. The chemical structure is based on x-ray crystallography of DNA done by Rosalind Franklin. Crick, Wilkins and Watson are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1962. Jonas Salk begins preliminary testing of polio vaccine. The vaccine is composed of three types of killed virus. Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown develop the first useful fungal antibiotic, NYSTATIN. The drug is developed through a long-distance collaboration with Brown in Albany and Hazen in New York City. |
1955 H. Edwin Umbarger adds isoleucine to Escheria coli cells growing on minimal glucose and shows that synthesis of isoleucine by the cell is blocked. Arthur Pardee shows the same inhibition pattern with pyrimidines. This finding provides evidence for feedback inhibition. |
1956 Publication of The Microbe’s Contribution to Biology by A. J. Kluyver and C. B. Van Neil. The work hints at a future explosion of knowledge concerning the regulation of metabolism and its genetic machinery—A prophecy that will come true in less than two decades. Charles E. Smith and his colleagues, by correlating the results of the analysis of 39,500 sera of patients with coccidiodomycosis, establish the usefulness of serology in the diagnosis and prognosis of coccidiodomycosis. D. L. D. Caspar and Rosalind Franklin independently show the location of the ribonucleic acid within the protein capsid in tobacco mosaic virus. G. Schramm and A. Gierer show that RNA from tobacco mosaic virus is infectious and by itself can cause the disease and result in new viral particles. |
1957 Seymour Benzer shows that recombination can occur between mutations within the same gene. He maps the mutations with the rII gene of phage T4 and demonstrates that genes are linear arrays of mutable sites. Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindemann discover interferon, an antiviral protein produced by the body to fight viral infections. The first experiments take place with chick embryo tissue cultures infected with influenza virus. The interferon protects adjacent cells against the virus. D. Carleton Gajdusek proposes that a slow virus is responsible for the wasting disease kuru. He shows that the course of the disease is similar to that of scrapie, which is transmitted among sheep. He also shows that kuru can be transmitted to chimpanzees.With Blumberg, Gajdusek is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1976. Heinz Fraenkal-Conrat demonstrates that viral RNA can act as a source of genetic information by mixing viral coat proteins and RNA from two viruses and showing that lesions on tobacco plants are entirely dependent on the source of RNA in the reassembled virus. Shuko Kinoshita, S, Udaka, and M. Shimono discover that bacteria can be used to produce monosodium glutamate. This leads to a new industry; the microbial production of amino acids for human and animal nutrition as well as for food flavoring. Francois Jacob and Elie Wollman provide evidence of the circular nature of the chromosome in Escherichia coli after analyzing data from interrupted mating experiments. |
1958 The Soviet delegation to the World Health Organization proposes a global crusade to eradicate smallpox. Approved in 1959, the program finally begins in 1967. Joseph H. Burkhalter and Robert Seiwald make an essential contribution to the identification of antigens by developing the first antibody labeling agent, flourescein isothiocyanate (FITC). Widespread use of FITC catalyzed the generation of other labeling procedures such as the radio-immunoassay and enzyme-linked immuno-absorbant assay. Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl use density gradient equilibrium centrifugation to show that the two parental strands of DNA untwist during replication and combine with a newly synthesized daughter strand, just as predicted by Watson and Crick. Ole Maaloe, Moselio Schaechter, and Nils O. Kjeldgard establish that bacteria can grow in a continuum of physiological states determined by the growth rate. This starts a new discipline, bacterial growth physiology. |
1959 O. Sawada and others demonstrate that antibiotic resistance can be transferred between Shigella strains and Escherichia coli strains by extrachromosomal plasmids. The transfer does not involve either transformation or transduction. Arthur Pardee, Francois Jacob, and Jacque Monod show that the enzyme beta-galactosidase is induced by changes in culture conditions. This is the first example of negative control of induction and is due to the action of a repressor protein. This set the stage for other experiments aimed at further delineating the interaction of a regulatory protein with a site on DNA to control the expression of other genes. Maxwell Finland, W. F. Jones, Jr., and M. W. Barnes comment on the development of antibiotic resistance, as a response to the introduction of antibacterial agents. Peter Mitchell proposes the chemiosmotic theory in which a molecular process is coupled to the transport of protons across a biological membrane. He argues that this principle explains ATP synthesis, solute accumulations or expulsions, and cell movement (flagellar rotation). Mitchell is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1978. R.L. Riley, C.C. Mills, and W. Nyka prove that pulmonary tuberculosis is disseminated as an aerosol and so affected individuals are contagious. They used guinea pigs as the animal model and exposed them to air from patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis. |
1960 Arthur Kornberg demonstrates DNA synthesis in cell-free bacterial extracts and later shows that a specific enzyme is necessary to link the nucleotide precursors of DNA. The enzyme works only in the presence of a DNA template. Francois Jacob, David Perrin, Carmen Sanchez and Jacques Monod propose the operon concept for control of bacteria gene action. Jacob and Monod later propose that a protein repressor blocks RNA synthesis of a specific set of genes, the lac operon, unless an inducer, lactose, binds to the repressor. With Lwoff, Jacob and Monod are awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1965. The oral polio vaccine developed by Albert Sabin is approved for use in the U. S. after trials are conducted abroad on more than 100 million people. |
1961 Benjamin D. Hall and Sol Speigleman show that singled stranded T2 phage DNA can form a hybrid with RNA from T2 infected Escherichia coli, thus demonstrating the potential of DNA-RNA hybridization methods. John Holland reports on the correlation between receptors for poliovirus on the surface of cells and the known pathogenicity of the virus for humans and animals. Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, and colleagues propose the existence of transfer RNA that uses a three base code and mediates in the synthesis of proteins. Marshall Nirenberg and J.H. Matthaei observe that a synthetic polynucleotide, poly U, directs the synthesis of a polypeptide composed only of phenylalanine. They conclude that the triplet UUU must code for phenylalanine. This is the start of successful efforts to decipher the genetic code. With Robert Holley and Har Gobind Khorana, Nirenberg is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1968. Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matthew Meselson use phage infected bacteria to show that ribosomes are the site of protein synthesis and confirm the existence of a messenger RNA. They demonstrate infection of Escherichia coli by phage T4 stops cell synthesis of host RNA and leads to T4 specific synthesis. The T4 RNA attaches to cellular ribosomes and directs protein synthesis. Brian McCarthy and E. T. Bolton describe a method for quantitative determination of the extent of hybridization of DNA or RNA from different biological sources. By this means, it is possible to determine the extent of sequence homology in the genomes of the organisms. |
1962 Daniel Nathans, Norton Zinder, and colleagues use E. coli cell-free system together with bacteriophage f2 RNA to produce viral coat protein identical in amino acid sequence to that isolated directly from the virus. With Arber and Smith, Nathans is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1978. James Gowans determines that small lymphocytes can initiate both cellular and humoral immune responses to specific antigens. They are the units of selection in the Burnet theory of clonal selection. |
1963 Baruch Blumberg describes the "Australia Antigen" (hepatitis B antigen) that is found in the blood of viral hepatitis sufferers. Together with Irving Millman, Blumberg develops a vaccine against the virus. Some consider it to be the first vaccine against cancer because of the strong association of hepatitis B with liver cancer. With Gadjusek, Blumberg is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1976. |
1964 Robin Holliday proposes that genetic recombination in yeast proceeds through two single stranded breaks made simultaneously at the same sites on the two DNA molecules to be recombined. The model appears to work for recombination of all organisms. Charles Yanofsky and coworkers define the relationship between the order of mutatable sites in the gene coding for Escherichia coli tryptophan synthetase and the corresponding amino acid replacements in the enzyme. It worked well for tyrptophan synthetase because the enzyme has two subunits, one of which could b emutated. The missense mutants in the alpha subunt could be mapped and related to the genetic fine strucutre of the gene. The property of correlating a mutation with an amino acid replacement is called colinearity. Earl Stadtman and colleagues demonstrate that methyl-B12 is involved in acetate synthesis and is the first step in the acetyl-Coa pathway. |
1965 Sol Speigleman and I. Haruna show that a virally coded replicase from phage Q beta can synthesize infectious viral RNA from precursor nucleotides. This establishes the concept of viral RNA acting as a genome. Ellis Englesberg, J. Irr, J. Power, and N. Lee add to the repertoire of regulatory control mechanisms by showing that an activator protein is required for the expression of the genes determining arabinose metabolism in E. coli. The key to the whole field of nucleic acid -based identification of microorganisms was the introduction of the concept of molecular systematics using proteins and nucleic acids by the American Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. Since the sequence of nucleic acids in a particular microorganism is extremely conservative constant, even over geological time, and the DNA and RNA molecules are relatively stable, they are excellent materials for the detection and identification of microorganisms. |
1966 Bruce Ames uses autotrophic strains of Salmonella typhimurium to screen for mutagens and potential carcinogens. The test is based on a determination of whether exposure to a particular chemical alters the mutation rate of the microorganism. There is a high correlation between mutagenicity and carcinogenicity in the "Ames test". Jon Beckwith and Ethan Signer transpose the lac region of E. coli into another microorganism to demonstrate genetic control. The implication of this work is the realization that chromosomes could be redesigned and genes moved. William Kirby and Alfred Bauer establish standards for antibiotic susceptibility testing based on a single disc diffusion procedure that distinguishes susceptible strains of bacteria from their resistant variants. This method permits clinical laboratories to provide physicians with accurate, reproducible, and reliable information with which to chose antimicrobials. |
1967 Walter Gilbert and Mark Ptashne isolate the repressor regulatory molecules postulated by Jacob and Monod. Gilbert isolates the lac repressor protein and Ptashne purifies the lamda repressor from bacteriophage. The repressor protein recognizes a specific site on the genome and binds to the site preventing transmission of DNA into RNA. Repressors are a key element of regulatory pathways and affect reaction by genes to environmental signals. J. Woodland Hastings shows that Vibrio fischeri, a luminous species of bacterium, produces a diffusible compound, termed an autioinducer, which accumulates in the medium during growth. This phenomenon allows the bacterium to sense its elevated density. The concept is analogous to the production of pheromones in higher organisms. Waclaw Szybalski and William Summers use the bacteriophage T7 to show that only one DNA strand acts as a template for RNA synthesis. They use the technique of DNA-RNA hybridization to anneal the newly synthesized RNA to a parent DNA strand. Theodor O. Diener discovers viroids, plant viruses that do not have a protein capsid. The infectious agent is a low molecular weight RNA that contains no protein capsid. Among the plants that are affected are potatoes, coconuts, and tomatos. Thomas Brock identifies the thermophile bacterium Thermus aquaticus from which heat stable DNA polymerase is later isolated and used in the polymerase chain reaction. Brock became interested in microbial mats during a trip to Yellowstone. It was believed at the time that the upper limit for bacterial growth was 73 degrees centigrade. Brock isolated a pink material that was growing at 85 degrees centigrade. Later the bacterium was cultured and ultraviolet irradiation was used to prove growth was taking place. Isolation and culture of this organism later leads to the discovery of the domain Archea. R. John Collier describes the mechanism by which diphtheria toxin inhibits protein synthesis in a cell-free system from recticulocytes. This is the first definition at the molecular level of the function of a bacterial protein virulence factor. Werner Arber shows that bacterial cells contain highly specific enzymes that add methyl groups to adenosine and cytosine at recognition sites. Methylation is a defensive mechanism of the cell preventing hydrolysis of the parent DNA by nucleases in the cell. These nucleases protect against the introduction of foreign DNA. With Nathans and Smith, Arber is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1978. Marvin Bryant, the Wolins, and Ralph Wolfe show that anaerobic bacteria can effect interspecies transfer of H2. One strain oxidizes ethanol to acetate and the other reduces carbon dioxide to methane. This provides an explanation for the interactions of anaerobes during the fermentation of complex organic compounds. |
1968 Lynn Margulis proposes that endosymbiosis has led to the generation of mitochondria and chloroplasts from bacterial progenitors. Charles Helmstetter and Stephen Cooper, using the "baby machine" establish the rules for replication in the Escherichia coli cell cycle. From the Woods Hole Marine Station summer research program came the discovery by Levin and Bang that the lysate of the amebocytes from the hemolymph of the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphermus clots in the presence of the lipopolysaccharides in the cell walls of gram-negative bacteria. This finding lead to the development of an in vitro assay for the pyrogens that contaminated injectable products that replaced the rabbit pyrogen test. |
1969 Julius Adler describes chemoreceptors in bacteria, a discovery demonstrating that bacteria can sense and process environmental information. His method involved inserting a tube of chemicals into a solution of bacteria and then counting the number of bacteria that swam to the chemical. Don Brenner and colleagues establish a more reliable basis for the classification of clinical isolates among members of the Enterobacteriaceae. They use nucleic acid reassociation in which denatured DNA labelled DNA fragments of one organism are reacted under annealing conditions with DNA of another organism. Studies on many species have proven the value of DNA-DNA hybridization to define a species. |
1970 Hamilton Smith and Kent W. Wilcox describe the action of restriction enzymes, which are a bacterial defense mechanism, but which quickly become tools for sizing DNA. They report the isolation of an enzyme capable of cleaving a double strand T7 DNA but not native DNA from the source organism, Haemophilus influenzae, or denatured DNA. They conclude that the enzyme has the ability to recognize specific DNA sequences. With Nathans and Arber, Smith is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, 1978. Howard Temin and David Baltimore independently discover reverse transcriptase in RNA viruses. The enzyme, reverse transcriptase, uses single stranded RNA as a template to synthesize a single stranded DNA complement . The latter then acts as a template for a complementary DNA chain consistent with general replication mechanisms. This process establishes a pathway for genetic information flow from RNA to DNA. Temin postulated that certain viruses possess an enzyme in their viral coat that facilitates the duplication of viral genes into the DNA of a cell. He called this gene a proviral gene and speculated that the genetic information was conveyed from RNA to DNA by the enzyme of the gene. With Dulbecco, Baltimore and Temin are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1975. |
1972 Joan Mertz and Ronald W. Davis establish that the R1 restriction endonuclease from Escherichia coli cuts DNA at a specific site four to six nucleotides long. The DNA sequence that is cut is complementary to other DNA cut by the same enzyme. This opens the way for cloning. Paul Berg constructs a recombinant DNA molecule from viral and bacterial DNA. . With Gilbert and Sanger, Berg is awarded the Noble Prize in Chemistry in 1980. |
1973 Stanley Cohen, Annie Chang, Robert Helling, and Herbert Boyer show that if DNA is broken into fragments and combined with plasmid DNA, such recombinant DNA molecules will reproduce if inserted into bacterial cells. They show that plasmids act as vectors for maintaining cloned genes. Boyer was researching restriction enzymes to determine whether they could cut the DNA at certain points. Cohen was isolating plasmids from E. coli. Cohen and Boyer met at a conference in Hawaii and shared their information.The discovery is a major breakthrough for genetic engineering, allowing for such advances as gene cloning and the modification of genes. The discovery also raised fears about accidental production of organisms with unexpected disease potential. Daniel Nathans, George Khoury, Malcolm Martin use restriction enzymes to cleave SV40 DNA into specific segments and then construct a complete physical map of the virus. George Laver and Robert Webster demonstrate that the genomes of influenza virus strains responsible for pandemics possess genome fragments acquired by genome segment reassortment from influenza strains circulating in animals. Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagl show that the cellular immune system requires that lymphocytes recognize both the virus invader and major histocompatibility antigens in order to kill virus-infected cells. This establishes the principle of simultaneous recognition, of both self and non-self molecules, as the basis of the specificity of the cellular immune system. Doherty and Zinkernagl are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1996. |
1974 Paul Berg, David Baltimore, Herbert Boyer, Stanley Cohen, Ronald Davis, David Hogness, Richard Roblin, James Watson, Sherman Weissman, and Norton Zinder publish a letter in "Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". They recommend that scientists defer from creating microorganisms with novel genes for drug resistance and toxin production, and also defer inserting cancer causing genes from viruses into bacterial host cells. They also suggest that the Federal government set guidelines for the conduct of research and that scientists themselves organize a conference to discuss these issues. Ralph Wolfe and Charles Taylor describe a novel coenzyme from a methanogen. This is the first of five new coenzymes, two of which are also widely distributed among the procaryotes. David Hogness and Michael Grunstein develop colony hybridization, a technique to transfer bacterial colonies to filters, lyse, and fix the DNA. Labeled probes of single stranded DNA, complementary to the fixed DNA, can be applied to determine the identity of the unknown bacterium. Jeff Schell and Marc Van Montagu discover that a circular strand of DNA (a plasmid) carried by A. tumefaciens transforms plant cells into tumor cells. |
1975 The Asilomar Conference is convened to discuss possible problems associated with gene cloning. A one-year moratorium, as well as guidelines for cloning research and for genetic engineering, is suggested. Kyung (June) Kwon-Chung describes sexual reproduction in the fungus, Cryptococcus neoformans. C.M. Wei and Bernard Moss, and Aaron Shatkin and colleagues show that messenger RNA contains a specific nucleotide cap at its 5-prime end that affects correct processing during translation. Georg Kohler and Cesar Milstein physically fuse mouse lymphocytes with neoplastic mouse plasma cells to yield hybridomas that can produce specific antibodies and can survive indefinitely in tissue culture. This approach offers a limitless supply of monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonal antibodies permit the generation of diagnostic tests that are highly specific and also function as probes to study cell function. With Jerne, Kohler and Milstein are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1984. |
1976 Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman independently show that RNA can serve directly as a catalyst of hydrolytic reaction. Altman investigated RNase P from Escherichia coli and Cech studied the rRNA gene from Tetrahymena thermophilia. They each determined that an RNA component could be separated from protein while retaining catalytic activity. Cech and Altman are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989. Altman, S. 1975. Biosynthesis of transfer RNA in Escherichia coli. Cell 4: 21-30. J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus identify oncogenes from the Rous sarcoma virus that can also be found in the cells of normal animals, including humans. Proto-oncogenes appear to be essential for normal development but can become cancer genes when cellular regulators are damaged or modified. Bishop and Varmus are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1989. The National Institutes of Health issues guidelines for the conduct of NIH supported research using recombinant DNA technology. The guidelines define physical and biological containment levels for research. William Trager and Jim Jensen succeed in cultivating the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which allowed its study, in the laboratory, for the first time. |
1977 Carl Woese uses ribosomal RNA analysis to identify a third form of life, the Archea, whose genetic makeup is distinct from but related to both Bacteria and Eucaryea. Louise Chow and Richard Roberts, and independently Phillip Sharp show that genes are not uninterrupted strands of genes but are interspersed with non-coding segments that do not specify protein structure. Both make the discovery with adenovirus while looking at viral protein synthesis. This finding establishes a fundamental distinction in information processing between procaryotic and eucaryotic organisms. Roberts and Sharp are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1993. Walter Gilbert and Fred Sanger independently develop methods to determine the exact sequence of DNA. Gilbert uses the technique to determine the sequence of the operon of a bacterial genome. Sanger and colleagues use the technique to determine the sequence of all 5375 nucleotides of the bacteriophage phi-X174, the first complete determination of the genome of an organism. With Berg, Gilbert and Sanger are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980. Centers for Disease Control researchers Joseph McDade and Charles C. Shepard isolate and identify Legionella pneumophilia as the bacterial pathogen in a newly discovered pulmonary disease. There are now known to be more that 40 species which occur in water settings. Mothers in Old Lyme (CT) describe a high level of illness among children, which is diagnosed as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. A research group led by Alan Steere finally begins to investigate in 1977 and using an epidemiological approach finds that deer ticks are the vector. Eugene Nester, Milton Gordon and Mary-Dell Chilton show that genes on the A. tumefaciens plasmid are transferred into infected plant cells. Holger Jannasch shows that microbial sulfur oxidation is a source of energy for dense animal colonies in the absence of light at deep sea hydrothermal vents. Jannasch and Wirsen use a device for sampling of microbial populations at depths of 6000 meters and then study the population without decompression. |
1979 Smallpox (variola) is declared officially eliminated; last natural case seen in Somalia in 1977. Small quantities remain held under tightly controlled conditions in the U.S. and former U.S.S.R. the only microbial disease ever completely defeated. |
1980 The U. S. Supreme Court rules that microorganisms altered in the laboratory can be patented. |
1981 Ananda Chakrabarty receives a patent for metabolizing Pseudomonads developed by conjugation that can degrade camphor, octene, salicylate, and naphthalene. Helen Whiteley and Ernest Schnepf at the University of Washington clone a Bt toxin gene. |
1982 U. S. Pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly markets the first genetically-engineered human insulin. Stanley Prusiner finds evidence that a class of infectious proteins he call prions cause scrapie, a fatal neurodegenerative disease of sheep. Prusiner is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1997. Karl Stetter isolates hydrothermophilic microbes (Archea) with optimal growth at 105 degrees C, first from shallow marine springs and later from deep sea smokers. Willy Burgdorfer and colleagues report successful investigation and treatment of Lyme Disease. They were able to isolate the organism, a treponema-like spirochete, and show antibody formation in patients with clinically diagnosed Lyme disease. Hartmut Michel succeeds in preparing highly ordered crystals of the photosynthetic reaction center from a purple bacterium. Together with Johann Diesendorfer and Robert Huber, Michel elucidates the details of the photosynthetically active components of protein, quinone, and iron. The structural picture agrees with the order of electron transfer steps established by other experiments. Michel, Diesenhofer, and Huber are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1988. |
1983 Luc Montaigner and Robert Gallo announce their discovery of the immunodeficiency virus (HIV) believed to cause AIDS. L. W. Riley and colleagues describe for the first time the involvement of E. coli O:157 as an infectious diarrhogenic agent. Jeff Schell and Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and colleagues, and scientists at Monsanto introduce genes into plants by using A. tumefaciens plasmid vectors. |
1984 Ralph Isberg and Stanley Falkow clone a gene (inv) from Yersinia psuedotuberculosis that confers an invasive phenotype on the non-invasive strain HB101 of E. coli. This is the first demonstration of transfer of such a virulence property by a single gene. Barry Marshall demonstrates that isolates from patients with ulcers all contain a bacterium called Campylobacter pylori, later called Helicobacter pylori. Marshall proves that the bacterium is the etiologic agent by swallowing a dose and developing gastritis, the precursor to ulcer disease. The bacterium uses a novel urease to produce ammonia, allowing it to survive at low pH. |
1985 Robert Gallo, Dani Bolognesi, Sam Broder, and others show that AZT inhibits the infectivity and cytopathic effects of HIV in vitro. This discovery is a significant advance in slowing the infective cycle of the virus. U. S. Department of Agriculture grants first license to market a genetically-engineered living organism—a virus to vaccinate against a herpetic disease in swine. |
1986 Roger Beachy, Rob Fraley and colleagues show that when tobacco plants are transformed with the gene of the coat protein of tobacco mosaic virus, the plants are resistant to the virus. This opened up a new field in which plants are transformed with the coat protein from other viruses or with other viral genes. |
1988 Kary Mullis uses a heat stable enzyme from Thermus aquaticus to establish polymerase chain reaction technology. The DNA polymerase replicates the DNA of interest plus oligonucleotide primers on either side. The primers are allowed to anneal and the reaction repeated to amplify the target DNA many-fold. Mullis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993. Stanley Falkow proposes a molecular version of Koch’s postulates which has applicability to the assessment of whether a gene or its products are required for virulence. |
1990 D.A. Relman, J.S. Loutit, T.M. Schmidt, Stanley Falkow, and Lucy Tompkins show that cat scratch fever or bacillary angiomatosis is caused by a bacterium that can’t be cultured. The authors used two molecular techniques, analysis of 16S rRNA and polymerase chain reaction amplification to identify the causative agent. |
1992 The entire sequence of 315,000 units of one of the sixteen chromosomes of the yeast S. cerevisiae is identified, representing a major advance toward the sequencing of all the chromosomes of yeast, a eucaryote. Note: This breakthrough comes 6000 years after the first known use of yeast by humans. |
1993 J. William Schopf demonstrates that cyanobacter-like taxa were extant 3.46 billion years ago, suggesting that oxygen-producing photoautotrophic organisms had already evolved by that time. |
1995 Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith, Claire Fraser, and colleagues at TIGR elucidate the first complete genome sequence of a microorganism - Haemophilus influenza. C. J. Peters, V. E. Chizhikov, S. F. Spiropoulou, S. P. Morzunov, and M. C. Monroe report the complete genome of the hantavirus Sin Nobra NMH10, detected in autopsy tissue of a patient who died of hantavius pulmonary syndrome. |
http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C10/C10Links/www.asmusa.org/mbrsrc/archive/SIGNIFICANT.htm
Bibel, Debra Jan. Milestones in Immunology, A Historical Exploration. Science Tech Publishers. 1988.
Brock, Thomas D. Milestones in Microbiology. American Society for Microbiology. 1975.
Brock, Thomas D. Great Events in Microbiology. Wall chart.
Chung, K.-T. Stevens, S.E., and D.H. Ferris. A Chronology of Events and Pioneers of Microbiology. SIM News. p.3 1995.
Clark, Paul F. Pioneer Microbiologists of America. University of Wisconsin Press. 1961.
Collard, Patrick, The Development of Microbiology, Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Corey, Melinda and George Ochoa. The Timeline Book of Science. The Stonesong Press, Inc. 1995.
Dixon, Bernard. Power Unseen: How Microbes Rule the World. W.H.Freeman/Spektrum Publishing. 1994.
Doetsch, Raymond N., Microbiology: Historical Contributions from 1776 to 1908, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Gest, Howard. The World of Microbes. Science Tech Publishers. 1987.
Perry, J.J. and Staley, James T. Microbiology: Dynamics and Diversity. Saunders College Publishing. 1997.
Winslow, C.E.A. Some Leaders and Landmarks in the History of Microbiology, Bacteriological Reviews, vol. 14, p.99, 1950.
Watson, J.D., Hopkins, N.H., Roberts, J. Steitz, J.A., and Weiner, A.M., Molecular Biology of the Gene, 4th Edition, Benjamin Cummings, 1987.
Wainwright, Milton and Joshua Lederberg, History of Microbiology in the Encyclopedia of Microbiology, volume 2, Academic Press, New York, 1992.