Timeline of biotechnology

• 7000 BCE – Chinese discover fermentation through beer making.
• 6000 BCE – Yogurt and cheese made with lactic acid-producing bacteria by various people.
• 4000 BCE – Egyptians bake leavened bread using yeast.[1]
• 500 BCE – Moldy soybean curds used as an antibiotic.
• 250 BCE – The Greeks practice crop rotation for maximum soil fertility.[2]
• 100 CE – Chinese use chrysanthemum as a natural insecticide.[1][3]

• 1663 – First recorded description of living cells by Robert Hooke.
• 1677 – Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovers and describes bacteria and protozoa.
• 1798 – Edward Jenner uses first viral vaccine to inoculate a child from smallpox.
• 1802 – The first recorded use of the word biology.
• 1824 – Henri Dutrochet discovers that tissues are composed of living cells.
• 1838 – Protein discovered, named and recorded by Gerardus Johannes Mulder and Jöns Jacob Berzelius.
• 1862 – Louis Pasteur discovers the bacterial origin of fermentation.
• 1863 – Gregor Mendel discovers the laws of inheritance.
• 1864 – Antonin Prandtl invents first centrifuge to separate cream from milk.
• 1869 – Friedrich Miescher identifies DNA in the sperm of a trout.
• 1871 – Ernst Hoppe-Seyler discovers invertase, which is still used for making artificial sweeteners.
• 1877 – Robert Koch develops a technique for staining bacteria for identification.
• 1878 – Walther Flemming discovers chromatin leading to the discovery of chromosomes.
• 1881 – Louis Pasteur develops vaccines against bacteria that cause cholera and anthrax in chickens.
• 1885 – Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux develop the first rabies vaccine and use it on Joseph Meister.

20th century''

• 1919 – Károly Ereky, a Hungarian agricultural engineer, first uses the word biotechnology.
• 1928 – Alexander Fleming notices that a certain mould could stop the duplication of bacteria, leading to the first antibiotic: penicillin.
• 1933 – Hybrid corn is commercialized.
• 1942 – Penicillin is mass-produced in microbes for the first time.
• 1950 – The first synthetic antibiotic is created.
• 1951 – Artificial insemination of livestock is accomplished using frozen semen.
• 1952 – L.V. Radushkevich and V.M. Lukyanovich publish clear images of 50 nanometer diameter tubes made of carbon, in the Soviet Journal of Physical Chemistry.
• 1953 – James D. Watson and Francis Crick describe the structure of DNA.
• 1958 – The term bionics is coined by Jack E. Steele.
• 1964 – The first commercial myoelectric arm is developed by the Central Prosthetic Research Institute of the USSR, and distributed by the Hangar Limb Factory of the UK.
• 1972 – The DNA composition of chimpanzees and gorillas is discovered to be 99% similar to that of humans.
• 1973 – Stanley Norman Cohen and Herbert Boyer perform the first successful recombinant DNA experiment, using bacterial genes.[4]
• 1974 – Scientist invent the first biocement for industrial applications.
• 1975 – Method for producing monoclonal antibodies developed by Köhler and César Milstein.
• 1978 – North Carolina scientists Clyde Hutchison and Marshall Edgell show it is possible to introduce specific mutations at specific sites in a DNA molecule.[5]
• 1980 – The U.S. patent for gene cloning is awarded to Cohen and Boyer.
• 1982 – Humulin, Genentech's human insulin drug produced by genetically engineered bacteria for the treatment of diabetes, is the first biotech drug to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
• 1983 – The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique is conceived.
• 1990 – First federally approved gene therapy treatment is performed successfully on a young girl who suffered from an immune disorder.
• 1994 – The United States Food and Drug Administration approves the first GM food: the "Flavr Savr" tomato.
• 1997 – British scientists, led by Ian Wilmut from the Roslin Institute, report cloning Dolly the sheep using DNA from two adult sheep cells.
• 1999 – Discovery of the gene responsible for developing cystic fibrosis.
• 2000 – Completion of a "rough draft" of the human genome in the Human Genome Project.

• 2001 – Celera Genomics and the Human Genome Project create a draft of the human genome sequence. It is published by Science and Nature Magazine.
• 2002 – Rice becomes the first crop to have its genome decoded.
• 2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed, providing information on the locations and sequence of human genes on all 46 chromosomes.
• 2008 – Japanese astronomers launch the first Medical Experiment Module called "Kibo", to be used on the International Space Station.
• 2009 – Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute uses modified SAN heart genes to create the first viral pacemaker in guinea pigs, now known as iSANs.
• 2012 – Thirty-one-year-old Zac Vawter successfully uses a nervous system-controlled bionic leg to climb the Chicago Willis Tower.