90th Anniversary Issue: 1970s

Genetic engineering, prescient reporting and other highlights, 1970–79

Volker Zinser

Engineering genes
In the 1970s, genetic engineering feats started to come rapid-fire. Scientists were swapping genes between cells (3/20/71, p. 193), making synthetic copies of genes that could function in living creatures (9/1/73, p. 132) and learning to cut and paste genes using chemical scissors called restriction enzymes (3/20/76, p.