Table 1.
Year | Event |
1949 | Slonimski and Ephrussi isolated yeast mutants which were defective for cell respiration and hypothesized presence of some non-Mendelian genetic characters (Ephrussi 1949). |
1960 | Chevremont demonstrated that mitochondria incorporated tritiated thymidine, a marker nucleoside: nucleic acid metabolism in mitochondria (Chevremont 1960). |
1962 | Nass and Nass demonstrated by morphological studies that mitochondria contained DNA (Nass MM and Nass S 1962). |
1965 | Saccone et al. showed that isolated mitochondria were able to synthesize RNA (Saccone et al. 1965). |
1965 | Kroon demonstrated that intact mitochondria or fragments could incorporate amino acids, signaling presence of a protein translation system in organelle (Kroon 1965). |
1967 | Clayton DA and Vinograd J isolated circular dimer and concatenate forms of mtDNA in human cancer cell lines (Clayton and Vinograd 1967). |
1974 | Bogenhagen and Clayton revealed multicopy state of mtDNA in human and mouse cells (Bogenhagen and Clayton 1974). |
1974 | Berk AJ and Clayton DA clarified several features of mtDNA replication in mouse cells, including its asymmetry in time and space (Berk and Clayton 1974). |
1975 | First complete mitochondrial genomes cloned by Chang et al. (1975). |
1981 | First complete genome, belonging to human, was sequenced by Anderson et al. Bibb and Clayton sequenced mouse mtDNA (Anderson et al. 1981; Bibb et al. 1981). |
Note.—Table summarizes the main scientific contributions that have clarified some structural and metabolic features of mitochondrial genomes, until first sequencing experiments (1980s).