GENETICS × TECHNOLOGY

Restriction Enzymes and Cloning

1973 CE

Phanerozoic · Cenozoic · Quaternary · Holocene · Meghalayan

Gene cloning became possible in 1973, when researchers used restriction enzymes to cut a gene from one organism and a ligase to join it into another, and within two years they suspended some of their own experiments.

Gene cloning, possible since 1973, is the insertion of a gene taken from one organism into another, where it is copied. Enzymes, proteins that carry out chemical reactions, do the work: restriction enzymes cut DNA at chosen sequences, and a ligase, another enzyme, joins the loose ends. Within two years, the researchers declared a moratorium, a voluntary suspension, on some of their own most promising experiments. They met at Asilomar to determine which experiments should be permitted. It was the first time a scientific discipline regulated its own work before any authority required it.

Why it matters

With gene cloning, biology became an engineering discipline, and its practitioners asked what should be forbidden before any regulatory body did. That precedent is invoked whenever a new technique raises the same question. This explains why the Asilomar meeting is more discussed than the cloning method.

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