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
Saiki, R. K., D. H. Gelfand, S. Stoffel, S. J. Scharf, R. Higuchi, G. T. Horn, K. B. Mullis and H. A. Erlich. 1988. Primer-directed enzymatic amplification of DNA with a thermostable DNA polymerase. Science 239: 487-491..
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.
Shaw, J. H. and S. Falkow. 1988. Model for invasion of human tissue culture cells by Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Infect. Immun. 56: 1625-1632.
1989
Stanley Fields develops the "two-hybrid" approach for looking at interactions between pairs of proteins by expressing them in yeast.
Fields, S., and O.-K. Song. 1989. A novel genetic system to detect protein-protein interactions. Nature 340:245-246.
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.
L.W. Relman, J.S. Loutit, T.M. Schmidt, S. Falkow, and L.S. Tompkins. 1990. The agents of bacillary angiomatosis. An approach to the identification of uncultured pathogens. N. Engl. J. Med. 323:1573-80. In Microbiology: A Centenary Perspective, edited by Wolfgang K. Joklik, ASM Press. 1999, p.86 [pdf]
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.
Oliver, S. G., et al. 1992. The complete DNA sequence of yeast chromosome III. Nature 357: 38.
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.
Schopf, J. W. 1993. Microfossils of the early Archean apex chert: New evidence of the antiquity of life. Science 260: 640-646.
1995
Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith, Claire Fraser, and colleagues at TIGR elucidate the first complete genome sequence of a microorganism - Haemophilus influenza.
R. D. Fleischmann, M. D. Adams, O. White, Etal. 1995.Whole-Genome Random Sequencing and Assembly of Haemophilus influenzae Rd. In Microbiology: A Centenary Perspective, edited by Wolfgang K. Joklik, ASM Press. 1999, p.286 [pdf]
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.
Morzunov, S. P., A. Feldman, C. F. Spiropoulou, V. A. Semenova, T. G. Kslazek, C. J. Peters, and S. T. Nichol. 1995. A newly recognized virus associated with a fatal case of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Louisiana. J. of Virology 69: 1980-1983.
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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 Fields develops the "two-hybrid" approach for looking at interactions between pairs of proteins by expressing them in yeast.
Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith, Claire Fraser, and colleagues at TIGR elucidate the first complete genome sequence of a microorganism - Haemophilus influenza.