GENE EDITING: TIMELINE

1953 Watson and Crick discover the double helix structure of DNA

1971 US scientist Paul Berg plans to mix DNA from a cancer-causing virus and the gut bacterium E. coli, halts project following informal opposition

1971 Soviet researchers tell USSR leader Brezhnev that genetic engineering could make new bioweapons, given massive funding

1972 Berg opens the era of genetic engineering, mixing DNA from a virus and a bacterium 1974 Widespread concern about the potential for new diseases leads to a global moratorium on genetic engineering

1975 Conference at Asilomar, California, decides on safety protocols that can make research safe

1975 The Biological Weapons Convention comes into operation

1978 GM microbes used to create human insulin

1980 Genetic engineering becomes big business, Paul Berg wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry

1981 Apartheid South Africa launches bioweapons programme, aimed

at “populations”

1985 Outbreak of hemorrhagic fever near Chinese Lop Nor facility suggests bioweapons research taking place

1989 Soviet defector reveals scale of bioweapons programme in USSR

1991 Collapse of USSR, widespread fears that bioweapons could fall into hands of terrorists or rogue states

1991 South African bioweapons programme privatised, goes bust in 1994

1997 Russian scientists make anthrax vaccine-resistant 2000 South African scientists try to sell E. coli strains containing a gene for the most potent bacterial toxin known

2000 Australian researchers discover how to make smallpox vaccine-resistant

2001 9/11 attacks in US create atmosphere of fear, boost research on bioweapons

2002 Sars coronavirus epidemic in China kills around 800 people

2003 Sars escapes from labs in China and Singapore

2003 Californian researchers make tuberculosis even more infectious

2003 Iraq accused of creating bioweapons in run-up to US-UK invasion – no evidence ever found

2005 Researchers sequence genome of 1918 flu pandemic virus, using bodies frozen in Alaskan permafrost

2011

Lethal H5N1 bird flu virus becomes transmissible through air in gain of function research

2012 Virologists call for global moratorium on gain of function studies of lethal pathogens

2012 CRISPR gene editing makes genetic engineering even easier

2013 Gain of function moratorium lifted following new security protocols

2014 H5N1 mixed with 1918 flu

virus to make new deadly virus

2014 Series of lab leaks and unrelated outbreak of Ebola in US lead to halt in funding of gain of function studies

2016

Canadian researchers reconstruct a virus closely related to smallpox

2017 Gain of function funding renewed in US, but with much stricter controls

2019 Two gain of function studies of H5N1 approved

2020 Covid-19 identified, global pandemic begins