WONDER SHEET BY BIOMENTORS By ANKITA MA’AM

CONTRIBUTION OF DIFFERENT SCIENTISTS

THE LIVING WORLD

• Carolus Linnaeus → Binomial nomenclature (naming system)
→ Systema Naturae (title of his publication)
→ developed Two-kingdom classi>ication (Plantae, Animalia)

BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION

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• Aristotle → used morphological characters to classify plants into trees, shrubs, herbs
→ divided animals into two groups (on presence and absence of red blood)

• R.H. Whittaker (1969) → proposed a Five Kingdom Classi>ication

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• Dmitri Ivanowsky (1892) → recognised certain microbes as causal organism of the

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mosaic disease of tobacco, found viruses were smaller than bacteria

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M.W. Beijerinek (1898) → coined the term “virus” and called the >luid as Contagium
vivum 2luidum (infectious living >luid)

• W.M. Stanley (1935) → showed that viruses could be crystallised and crystals consist
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largely of proteins

• T.O. Diener (1971) → discovered viroids

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PLANT KINGDOM
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• George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker → developed natural classi>ication

systems for >lowering plants
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CELL: THE UNIT OF LIFE

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• Anton Von Leeuwenhoek → >irst saw and described a live cell

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• Robert Brown → discovered the nucleus

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• Matthias Schleiden, Theodore Schwann (1839) → formulated the cell theory

• Rudolf Virchow (1855) → >irst explained that cells divided and new cells are formed
from pre-existing cells (Omnis cellula-e-cellula)

• Singer and Nicolson (1972) → >luid mosaic model (cell membrane)

• Camillo Golgi (1898) → discovered golgi bodies

• George Palade (1953) → >irst observed ribosomes under the electron microscope

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 MINERAL NUTRITION

• Julius von Sachs (1860) → demonstrated the technique of hydroponics

PHOTOSYNTHESIS IN HIGHER PLANTS

• Joseph Priestley (1774) → discovered oxygen

• Jan Ingenhousz → proved green parts of the plant release oxygen

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Julius von Sachs (1854) → provided evidence for production of glucose when plants
grow

• T.W Engelmann → observed that the bacteria accumulated mainly in the region of blue

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and red light of the split spectrum (resembles absorption spectra of chlorophyll a and b),
used green alga, Cladophora

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• Cornelius van Niel → demonstrated that photosynthesis is essentially a light-dependent
reaction in which hydrogen from a suitable oxidisable compound reduces carbon dioxide
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• Melvin Calvin → Calvin cycle (C3 cycle)
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• Hatch, Slack → C4 pathway

RESPIRATION IN PLANTS
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• Gustav Embden, Otto Meyerhof, J. Parnas → gave the scheme of glycolysis

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PLANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

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• F.W. Went → isolated by auxin from tips of coleoptiles of oat seedlings

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• E. Kurosawa (1926) → reported the appearance of symptoms of ‘bakanae’ disease in

rice seedlings, later identi>ied as gibberellic acid
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• F. Skoog → observed that from the internodal segments of tobacco stems the callus (a
mass of undifferentiated cells) proliferated only if, in addition to auxins the nutrients
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medium was supplemented with either: extracts of vascular tissues, yeast extract,
coconut milk

• Miller (1955) → identi>ied and crystallised the cytokinesis promoting active substance
(kinetin)

• H.H. Cousins (1910) → con>irmed the release of a volatile substance from ripened
oranges, that hastened the ripening, later identi>ied as ethylene

PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE AND VARIATION

• Gregor Mendel (1856-1863) → conducted hybridisation experiments on garden peas,

proposed the laws of inheritance in living organisms

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• de Vries, Correns and von Tschermak (1900) → independently rediscovered Mendel’s
results on the inheritance of characters

• Walter Sutton, Theodore Boveri (1902) → Chromosomal theory of inheritance

• Thomas Hunt Morgan → experimental veri>ication of the chromosomal theory of

inheritance, worked on fruit >lies, Drosophila melanogaster

• Alfred Sturtevant → gave the principle of genetic mapping

• Henking (1891) → discovered ‘X body’ (X-chromosome)

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MOLECULAR BASIS OF INHERITANCE

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• Friedrich Meischer (1869) → identi>ied DNA as an acidic substance present in nucleus,
named it as ‘Nuclein’

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• James Watson, Francis Crick (1953) → proposed doble helix structure of DNA

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Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin → X-ray diffraction studies on DNA

• Erwin Chargaff → For a double stranded DNA, purine and pyrimidine ratio equals one
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• Frederick Grif^ith (1928) → Transforming principle, used Streptococcus pneumoniae

• Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, Maclyn McCarty (1933-44) → used enzymes like
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DNAase, protease, RNAase to determine the biochemical nature of the ‘transforming

principle’
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• Alfred Hershey, Martha Chase (1952) → proved DNA is the genetic material and not
protein using bacteriophage
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• Matthew Meselson, Franklin Stahl (1958) → experimentally proved the semi-

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conservative nature of DNA

• Taylor (1958) → experimentally proved that the DNA in chromosomes also replicate
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semi conservatively using Vicia faba (faba beans)

• Alec Jeffreys → developed the technique of DNA Fingerprinting

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EVOLUTION

• Louis Pasteur → Spontaneous generation theory

• Oparin of Russia, Haldane of England → theory of chemical evolution

• S.L. Miller (1953) → experimental evidence supporting the theory of chemical

evolution

• Ernst Heckel → >irst proposed embryological support for evolution

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• Karl Ernst von Baer → disapproved Ernst Heckel’s theory

• Charles Darwin → theory of natural selection

• Thomas Malthus → worked on populations which in>luenced Darwin

• Hugo de vries → Saltation

STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCEMENT IN FOOD PRODUCTION

• Norman E. Borlaug → developed semi-dwarf wheat at International Centre for Wheat

and Maize Improvement in Mexico

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MICROBES IN HUMAN WELFARE

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• Alexander Fleming → discovered the >irst antibiotic, Penicillin

• Ernest Chain, Howard Florey → established full potential of Penicillin as an effective

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antibiotic
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BIOTECHNOLOGY: PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES

• Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer (1972) → constructed >irst recombinant DNA

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ORGANISMS AND POPULATIONS

• Gause → ‘Competitive Exclusion Principle’

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BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION

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• Robert May → estimated the global species diversity at about 7 million

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• Alexander von Humboldt → species-area relationship

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• Paul Ehrlich → ‘rivet popper hypothesis’

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• David Tilman → found that plots with more species showed less year-to-year variation
in total biomass
→ increased diversity contributed to higher productivity
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 OTHER IMPORTANT EVENTS

• 1945 → Alexander Fleming, Ernest Chain and Howard Florey awarded the Nobel
Prize for the discovery of Penicillin

• 1951 → ‘Family planning’ programmes initiated in India

• 1963 → Sonalika, Kalyan Sona (wheat varieties, introduced in India)

• 1971 → Government of India legalised MTP (Medical termination of pregnancy)

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• 1974 → Chipko movement of Garhwal Himalayas

• 1983 → Eli Lilly (American company) used rDNA technology to create human insulin

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• 1987 → Montreal Protocol signed at Montreal (Canada), effective in 1989, to control

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the emission of ozone depleting substances

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1990 → >irst clinical gene therapy given to a 4-year-old girl with adenosine
deaminase (ADA) de>iciency

• 1990 → Human genome project was launched,

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→ 2003: project completed

→ May 2006: sequencing chromosome 1 was completed
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• 1992 → ‘The Earth Summit’ on Biological Diversity held in Rio de Janeiro to take
appropriate measures for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable utilisation of
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its bene>its

• 1997 → Rosie (>irst transgenic cow), produced human protein-enriched milk (2.4
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grams per litre)

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• 2000 → Maize hybrids (twice the amount of lysine and tryptophan amino acids)
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• 2002 → ‘World Summit’ on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South

Africa, 190 countries pledged their commitment to achieve by 2010, a signi>icant
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reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss at global, regional and local levels