As time goes by…

In the 40 years that we have been publishing Laboratory News we have seen vast advances in our understanding of the world around us. With space-based telescopes to particle colliders, we have explored matter and peered into the realm of the enormous and miniscule, we have begun tounderstand the very code of life. Here are a few highlights of scientific achievement over the last 40 years.

1971

• Laboratory News is first published

• The first email is sent between a pair of computers sitting side by side in Cambridge, Massachusetts – it simply reads QUERTYUIOP.

1972

• The first adjustable micropipette is invented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Warren Gilson and Henry Lardy, leading to the creation of Gilson Inc. Gilson patented the design in 1974, and his design allowed one tool to be used for different sized measurements.

1973

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is developed at the University of Nottingham. The first studies on humans were published in 1977.
Where would we be without MRI? Scanners produce high quality images of the brain, muscles, heart and cancers in a matter of minutes, but back in the 1970s it took five hours to produce just one image.
MRI was first used to distinguish healthy tissue from cancerous tumours by providing a contrast between the different soft tissues of the body. It magnetises some of the atoms in the body while this magnetisation is altered by radio frequency fields – the result is a rotating magnetic field that is detectable by the scanner.
But MRI is not without its controversy – the question at the centre of the debate is who actually invented the  technique? Paul Lauterbur from the University of Illinois and Sir Peter Mansfield from Nottingham were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning MRI, but Raymond Vahan Damadian claimed he had invented MRI – Lauterbur and Mansfield merely refined the technology.

1974

• Microsoft officially is founded, with Bill Gates as CEO.

• Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson discovers the 3.2 millionyear-old fossil skeleton of a human ancestor – Australopithecus afarensis – dubbed “Lucy” in Ethiopia.

• CFCs and their brominated counterparts had been used for years in aerosols and refrigerants, but by the mid 1970s it was clear there’s something amiss – they were destroying the ozone layer.
Chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina realised their low reactivity was key to their destructive effects – CFCs can hang around in the atmosphere for 100 years before hitting the stratosphere where the Sun’s UV rays can break the Cl-Cl bond. Ozone is tasked with stopping harmful UV rays reaching Earth, but these reactive chlorine species destroy this protective shield.
Concerns about CFCs led to a phase-out mandated by the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The destructive chemicals were created in the late 1920s by Thomas Midgley Jr, who also invented tetra ethyl lead – designed to stop knocking in car engines.

 1976

• The first colour pictures are transmitted by NASA’s Mars Viking probes. Viking was launched in August 1975.

1977

• Voyager 1 and 2 are launched. Over the last 34 years they have been exploring the outer Solar System.

1978

• Louise Brown – the first test tube baby – is born. Her sister Natalie was also born via IVF four years later and in 1999 became the first IVF baby to give birth naturally. In vitro fertilisation was developed by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, the latter receiving the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2010.

• The first Global Position System (GPS) satellite – Block-I GPS – is launched. It was widely used in the Gulf War in 1990- 91, but took until 1996 before it become available to civilians.

• Molecular biology and biotechnology supplier Promega is founded.

 1979

•  Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister.

 1980

• Mount St Helens experiences a magnitude 4.2 earthquake. A second quake of magnitude 5.1 triggers the collapse of the north face of the mountain and a debris avalanche. The magma flattens over 230 square miles and releases 1.5 million metric tonnes of sulphur dioxide.
• The WHO announces smallpox has been eradicated. Smallpox is a rather nasty infectious disease unique to humans – it localises in small blood vessels of the skin, and in the mouth and throat.

Its thought smallpox first emerged around 10,000BC, with the earliest physical evidence of the disease on the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V.  In 1796, doctor Edward Jenner realised you could inject someone with cowpox virus and they’d become immune to smallpox – which is in the same family – and coined the term vaccine.

Since Jenner’s discovery, many attempts to eradicate the disease were made, with global vaccination programs in 1958 and 1967. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977. The last case of smallpox in the world occurred in Birmingham in 1978. Medical photographer, Janet Parker, contracted the disease at the University of Birmingham Medical School and died on September 11, 1978.  Professor Henry Bedson, the scientist responsible for smallpox research at the university, later committed suicide.

 1981

• Maiden flight of the Space Shuttle with Columbia first to leave Earth’s orbit. The first operational flights began in 1982, andthe six shuttles made 135 flights in total.

Columbia was destroyed in 2003 after a failed re-entry – it flew 28 missions, spending over 300 days in space. This was one of only two

failures the Space Shuttle experienced in its 30 year history: the other being the launch failure of Challenger in 1986.

The last Space Shuttle – Atlantis – launched from Kennedy Space Centre on 8th July 2011. Atlantis first flew in October 1985 and has spent over 307 days in space. The retired Shuttle will be on display at the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex once decommissioned.

Discovery will be housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Endeavour will be at the California Science Centre and Enterprise will head to the Intrepid Sea-Air- Space Museum in New York.

 1983

• HIV is identified by French doctors Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier who are researching AIDS. Gallo claims the virus his group isolated from an AIDS patient is similar to other human Tlymphotropic viruses and dubbed it HTLV-III. Montagnier’s group isolated the virus from a patient with swelled lymph nodes in the neck and physical weakness – two classic symptoms of AIDS.

Montagnier was jointly awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen who discovered HPV leads to cervical cancer. Gallo was left out. Gallo was disappointed he wasn’t named a co-recipient; Montagnier was surprised: “It was important to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS, and Gallo had a very important role in that. I’m very sorry for Robert Gallo.”

 1984

• DNA fingerprinting is developed by molecular biologist Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester in England, who devises a way to analyse the three million base pairs of DNA sequences by comparing only the parts that show greatest variation among people.

• The first superstring revolution begins. Hundreds of physicists begin working on string theory – the idea that the most fundamental constituents of matter can be thought of as minuscule strings vibrating in multidimensional space, which could resolve the inconsistencies between general relativity and quantum physics.

 1985

• The polymerase chain reaction is developed by American biochemist Kary Mullis, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work – along with Michael Smith – in 1993.

The method to replicate a short DNA template using enzymes in vitro was first described in 1971 but it was largely ignored. Mullis said he conceived PRC while cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway. He said he was playing in his mind with a new way of analysing mutations in DNA, but realised he’d actually invented a method of amplifying any DNA region through repeated cycles of duplication driven by DNA polymerase.

He patented the technique, and assigned it to Cetus Corporation where he was working at the time. The patents have since been purchased by pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche.

• Buckyball or Buckminsterfullerene is first prepared at Rice University by Harold Kroto, James Heath, Sean O’Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. The discovery of buckyball paved the way for many innovations in nanotechnology.

 1986

• 26th April: Nuclear accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere.

 1989

• The Human Genome Project is announced – the international scientific research project has the primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA and identifying and mapping all 20-25,000 genes of the human genome.

The project was expected to take 15 years, but a rough draft was announced in 2000 and by 2003, an essentially complete genome was published – two years ahead of schedule. In May 2006, the sequence of the last chromosome was published.

However, the entire genome hasn’t actually been completed – we only have about 92.3% sequenced. It’s likely that centromeres and telomeres will remain unsequenced until new technology is developed. Most of the remaining DNA is highly repetitive and unlikely to contain any genes – but we can’t be sure until the entire genome is sequenced.

1990

• The Hubble Space Telescope is launched by Space Shuttle Discovery. The telescope – named after astronomer Edwin Hubble – was actually due to launch in 1983 but technical delays, budget problems and the Challenger disaster in 1986 delayed the launch. The estimated total cost of the telescope was $400m, but this figure rose to a staggering $2.5bn.

When it finally did launch, scientists found the main mirror had been ground incorrectly and images were not as sharp as they should be. A servicing mission in 1993 corrected the problem, and it’s been taking extremely sharp images ever since. Hubble has taken some of the most detailed visible light images of the universe’s most distant objects.

It has currently spent over 21 years in space and in July made its one millionth scientific observation while searching for water in an exoplanet’s atmosphere 1,000 light-years away. It is due to be deorbited sometime between 2013 and 2021. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Telescope was due to be launched in 2018, but is currently threatened with cancellation due to funding issues.

 1991

• The development of the internet harks back to the 1960s, but the WorldWideWeb becomes a publicly available service on the internet in 1991, when its inventor – British physicist and computer scientist at CERN – Tim Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the WorldWideWeb project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.

The project was originally proposed in November 1990 by Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau. The pair predicted a read-only web could be developed in three months, and that it would take a further three months for “the creation of new links and new material by readers, so that authorship becomes universal.”

The first photo was uploaded by Berners-Lee in 1992 – it was of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes – an all-female parody pop group self labelled as “the one and only High Energy Rock Band”. Technically Les Horribles Cernettes were the first band to have a website!

• Otzi the Iceman – Europe’s oldest known mummy – is discovered in the Otzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border. He had been naturally mummified by the ice and kept in amazing condition for around 5,300 years.  Research on the body and the various artefacts found with it continues to reveal much about the life of Copper Age Europeans

1994

• The Channel Tunnel is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth. The tunnel was originally proposed by French mining engineer Albert Mathieu in 1802, who proposed horse-drawn coaches and oil lamp illuminations. Over the years several proposals were made, and in 1988 a private consortium of British and French banks and construction companies joined together and began work.

1996

• Dolly the sheep – the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell – is born at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. She was cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer: the cell nucleus from an adult cell was transferred into an unfertilised oocyte which has had its nucleus removed. The hybrid then receives an electric shock to stimulate cell division before it is implanted into the surrogate mother to carry to term.

That means Dolly had three mothers – one provided the egg, another the DNA and a third carried the embryo to term. She was bred with a Welsh Mountain ram and gave birth to six children of her own.

The donor cell used for Dolly’s cloning was taken from a mammary gland, scientist Ian Wilmut said: “Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.” Dolly was euthanised on 14th February 2003 because she had severe arthritis and progressive lung cancer common in sheep.

 1997

• Comet Hale Bopp – named after its independent discoverers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp – passes perihelion, its closest point to the planet. The comet was only discovered in 1995, and has an orbital period of 2520-2533 years.

 1998

• On-orbit construction of the International Space Station begins with Zarya – a functional cargo block. It’s due to be completed by 2012, and will be operational until 2020, possibly even 2028.

• The first spacewalk on the ISS connects computer cables between connecting modules Unity and Zayra. The spacewalk lasted seven hours and 21 minutes, and was completed by Jerry L. Ross and James H. Newman

• The first human embryonic stem cells are isolated and grown in cell culture by researchers led by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These cells are undifferentiated and can be coached into developing into different cells of the human body. Thompson’s lab had produced embryonic stem cell lines which could propagate indefinitely in culture – unlike most cell types which die off after a few generations. In 1995, the lab had reported the first isolation of embryonic stem cells lines from a non-human primate.

2000

• First draft human genome is produced.

2003

• Complete human genome is published. The sequenced human genome could fill 200 telephone directories of 500 pages each!

2004

• 9.3 magnitude earthquake on Boxing Day causes a tsunami which kills over 230,000 people. Its the third largest earthquake ever recorded, the largest occurred in May 1960 in Valdiva, Chile.

2006

• Pluto is reclassified as a dwarf planet.

• The first invisibility cloak is developed from metamaterials

2008

• The first proton beams are successfully circulated in the main ring of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC aims to probe the boundaries of physics, challenging what we already know about the Universe and searching for the theoretical Higgs boson.

It consists of four main detectors – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb – and was built in collaboration with 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, plus hundreds of universities and laboratories.

The LHC – the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator lies in a tunnel 27km in circumference and 175m deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border. It aims to smash together opposing beams of protons at high energies. The first planned collisions took place in March 2010 at 3.5TeV per beam – half its anticipated energy. It hopes to reach 7 TeV by 2014.

2009

• Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite LCROSS crashes onto the Moon and scientists report the existence of significant reserves of water ice on the satellite.

2010

• Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurs after an explosion on the drilling platform.

• Scientists discover that life has evolved and can thrive in the presence of arsenic, which replaces phosphorous in the amino acid that makes up the organism’s DNA.

• American scientists from the Institute of Craig Venter succeed in synthesising an artificial genome bacteria Mycoplasma mycoides and transplanted it to another type bacteria.

2011

• Earthquake and tsunami in Japan affect the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant.

• Elements Ununquadium and Ununhexium are confirmed to exist by IUPAC. The pair will be named by their Russian discoverers.

• The last Space Shuttle – Atlantis – launches from Kennedy Space Centre after 135 Space Shuttle launches.

• Neptune completed its first orbit since it was discovered on 24th September 1846. Its orbit is a massive 164.79 Earth years and its seasons last 40 years. Neptune lies about 4.4 billion km away from Earth, and was the first planet in the solar system to be discovered deliberately – scientists were looking for it because they thought it must be interfering with the strange orbit of Uranus, which was discovered in the 1780s.

DONT FORGET

If you think we have missed something important, let us know! We’d really like your input on this – what do you think have been the scientific highlights over the last 40 years? Send in your thoughts to phil.prime@laboratorynews.co.uk and you could make it into a future issue of Laboratory News.