Researched
Sanger DNA sequencing
Frederick Sanger's chain-termination method (1977) made it possible to read DNA letter by letter.
Open in the interactive tree →In 1977 Frederick Sanger published a method that stops copied DNA strands at each of the four bases, so that the fragment lengths reveal the sequence; his group read the 5,386 letters of the virus phiX174 that year, the first DNA genome. Automated Sanger machines with fluorescent dyes, from the 1980s, drove the Human Genome Project. The method earned Sanger his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980.
Prerequisites
Unlocks
- Genome sequencing2003Sanger sequencing read the first genomes and drove the Human Genome Project