Excerpt:
Many people view genetic engineering as a relatively new field of scientific pursuit, but in fact the techniques that are in use today are the result of a series of landmark discoveries that were made over a period spanning more than 125 years. This article presents a timeline of key discoveries that have culminated in the human genome project, an international effort to decipher the sequence of the 3 billion base pair subunits of DNA which reside in the chromosomes of human beings.