In Vitro Biology applications play an important role in human health and food development. Travel through time to learn about some of the seminal discoveries that shaped the science from the past, present, and are creating the science of our future.

PAST

• 1670: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek improves the microscope and reports his observations of bacteria and algae to the Royal Society in London.
• 1866: Gregor Mendel publishes his foundational work on heredity in peas, establishing the principles of genetics.
• 1877: Julius R. Petri invents the Petri dish, revolutionizing the cultivation and study of microorganisms.
• 1886: Experiments show that refrigeration extends the shelf life of milk, and pasteurization plus chilling is even more effective. Chicago becomes the first city to mandate pasteurization with chilling in 1908.
• 1902: Gottlieb Haberlandt proposes the theoretical basis for plant tissue culture, introducing the concept of plant cell totipotency.
• 1904: H. Henning successfully isolates and grows crucifer embryos on mineral salts and sugar solutions.
• 1908: Vilhelm Ellermann and Oluf Bang discover retroviruses by showing that chicken leukosis is caused by a virus (ALV).
• 1922: W.J. Robbins and W. Kotte independently culture small root tips of peas and maize, leading to the concept of organ culture.
• 1932: Dr. Florence Sabin identifies the first stem cell.
• 1939: Gautheret establishes the first continuously growing plant tissue cultures from carrot root cambium. Philip R. White demonstrates indefinite culture of tomato roots in liquid medium.
• 1944: Oswald Avery and colleagues provide evidence that DNA is the carrier of genetic information.
• 1951: The first immortalized human cell line (HeLa cells) is created from Henrietta Lacks at Johns Hopkins Hospital by George Otto Gey, first president of the Tissue Culture Association (TCA) advancing cell biology research.
• 1951: Joseph Leighton (Society for In Vitro Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 1998) develops a sponge matrix method for tissue culture formation of organized aggregates of cells in vitro
• 1952: George Morel and Claude Martin demonstrate that virus-free plants can be recovered using shoot meristem culture.
• 1953: James Watson and Francis Crick publish the structure of the DNA double helix.
• 1955: Folke Skoog (Society for In Vitro Lifetime Achievement Award 1992) discovers the first cytokinin (kinetin) as a breakdown product of herring sperm DNA.
• 1957: Folke Skoog and Carlos O. Miller propose that the auxin-cytokinin ratio regulates shoot and root initiation in cultured callus (Link).

• 1958: F.C. Steward, M.O. Mapes, and K. Mears observed the phenomenon of somatic embryogenesis in carrot suspension cultures. They reported that cells derived from explanted roots of cultivated carrots could form unorganized clusters in suspension. These cell clusters were capable of developing first into roots, then shoots, and ultimately regenerating into whole plants (Link).
• 1959: G. Melchers and L. Bergmann cultivate haploid tissues other than pollen for the first time.
• 1959: Leonard Hayflick (Society for In Vitro Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 1995) developed the first inverted microscope for use in cell culture research.
• 1960: E.C. Cocking isolates and cultures protoplasts, showing cell wall regeneration. L. Bergmann obtains callus from suspension cultures. G. Morel develops virus-free Cymbidium progenies via meristem culture.
• 1962: Toshio Murashige (Society for In Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 1991) and Folke Skoog develop the MS medium, now the most widely used nutrient medium in plant tissue culture.
• 1966: S.G. Guha and S.C. Maheshwari culture anthers and pollen to produce haploid embryos.
• 1970: Stanley Cohen, Paul Berg and Herbert Boyer develop recombinant DNA technology.
• 1970 Hamilton Smith’s lab discovered restriction enzymes that allowed DNA to be cut at specific places, enabling scientists to isolate genes from an organism’s genome
• 1973: I. Potrykus attempts the first chloroplast and nucleus transfer in Petunia hybrida.
• 1974: Walter Nelson-Rees (Society for In Vitro Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 2004) using chromosome banding showed that many immortal cell lines, previously thought to be unique, were actually HeLa cell lines. The HeLa cells had contaminated and overgrown the other cell lines
• 1975: G. Morel establishes cold storage of regenerated plants for a year.
• 1975: Howard Temin, David Baltimore, and Renato Dulbecco win the Nobel Prize for the discovery of reverse transcriptase.
• 1975 – Asilomar Conference A group of biologists get together with a few lawyers and doctors to create guidelines for the safe use of genetically engineered DNA.
• 1977: Mary-Dell Chilton provided definitive proof of the transfer of agrobacterial DNA to plant tissues (Link)
• 1978: A. Zelcer, D. Aviv, and E. Galun develop donor-recipient protoplast fusion for transferring organelles between plants (Link).
• 1980: The first patent for a genetically modified organism (GMO) is issued.
• 1981: P.J. Larkin and W.R. Scowcraft develop the concept of somaclonal variation.
• 1981: G.R. Martin establishes the first pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryos.
• 1982: The first cases of HIV are officially reported, related to earlier simian virus cases. (In 2007, Gero Hütter and Susanne Ganepola eradicate HIV in a patient by transplanting CCR5-deficient hematopoietic stem cells.)
• 1982: FDA Approves First GMO Humulin, insulin produced by genetically engineered E. coli bacteria.
• 1983: Transgenic plants are obtained for the first time using Ti plasmid vectors. 1983: Kary Mullis conceives and demonstrates PCR.
• 1984: Alec Jeffreys develops DNA fingerprinting.
• 1984: HIV is identified as the causative agent of AIDS.
• 1986: The Human Genome Project is launched.
• 1987: John C. Sanford invents the particle gun
• 1987: T. M. Klein (Society for In Vitro Biology Fellow Award 2014), E. D. Wolf, R. Wu & and J. C. Sanford published on the biolistic particle delivery system (Link)
• 1992: Ranbow papaya resistant to Papaya ringspot virus (PRSV is generated via particle bombardment (Link)
• 1994: The FlavrSavr tomato, engineered to have a longer shelf life, was the first GM crop approved for sale in the U.S
• 1995-96: Biotech soybeans and maize are approved for sale and biotech cotton is commercialized in the United States. Biotech crops become the most rapidly adopted technology in the history of agriculture
• 1998: Rainbow papaya is released for commercial cultivation in Hawaii
• 1999: German and Swiss scientists develop golden rice, fortified with beta carotene, which stimulates production of vitamin A that can prevent some forms of blindness.
• 2000–2003: The Human Genome Project is completed, mapping the entire human genome.
• 2006: Scientists successfully implant seven bladders grown in vitro into human patients.
• 2007: Gero Hütter and Susanne Ganepola eradicate HIV in a patient via CCR5-deficient stem cell transplant.
• 2008: Daniel Gibson and the J. Craig Venter Institute synthesize the first functional, self-replicating bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.
• 2009: Hans Clevers discovers the first organoids using intestinal stem cells in a 3-D Matrigel culture system.
• 2010: Targeted DNA double-strand breaks by TALEN was demonstrated.
• 2012: The first synthetic eukaryotic genome is built through the Synthetic Yeast 2.0 program.
• 2012:  Jinek et al. first demonstrated that CRISPR could be programmed for targeted DNA cleavage in vitro
• 2013: Cong et al. and Mali et al. described CRISPR-based genome editing in mammalian cell culture
• 2013: Shan et al., Li et al. and Nekrasov et al. targeted various endogenous genes and transgenes by protoplast transfection, agroinfiltration and generated stable transgenic plants by both NHEJ and HR mechanisms

THE PRESENT 

• 2016: Base editing developed
• 2016: First report of the use of morphogenic regulator genes to improve monocot plant transformation (Link). Among the authors William Gordon-Kamm (Society for In Vitro Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 2023) and Todd J. Jones (Society for In Vitro Biology Lifetime Achievement Award 2024)
• 2016: Okanagan Specialty Fruits received regulatory approval for Artic Apple (non-browning apple generated via Agrobacterium transformation with reduced levels of polyphenol oxidases) (Link)
• 2019: Prime editing  a ‘search-and-replace’ genome editing technology in molecular biology by which the genome of living organisms may be modified is reported.
• 2020: Pfizer and BioNTech develop the first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, introducing mRNA encoding the viral protein to stimulate an immune response.
• 2020: PinkGlow^TM pineapple goes on sale in the United States (original event generated via Agrobacterium transformation and RNA interference construct for gene encoding lycopene beta cyclase and lycopene epsilon cyclase) (Link)
• 2022: CRISPR-Combo was developed to improve plant transformation and regeneration while achieve genome editing. Among the authors is Yiping Qi, (Society for In Vitro Biology Early Career Award)
• 2023: Exagamglogene autotemcel, sold under the brand name Casgevy, is approved in the United Kingdom for the treatment of sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia
• 2024: Purple tomatoes became the first genetically modified food crop to be marketed directly to home gardeners as seed. (Link)
• 2025:World’s First Patient Treated with Personalized CRISPR Gene Editing Therapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

THE FUTURE

The possibilities are endless. Perhaps your discoveries will be the next to shape the future of science!