History of coenzyme Q10

In 1957, Dr, Frederick Crane at the University of Wisconsin, USA, isolated an orange substance from the mitochondria of beef heart. It was during the experiment, when he noticed unusually yellow crystals in the lipid from mitochondria.

In the same years, Professor R.A. Morton from England provided the name coenzymes Q10 and the alternative designation ubiquinone due to its ubiquitous presence in every cell of the body.

In 1958, ‘Father of Coenzyme Q10 research’, Dr. Karl Folkers and his co-workers were able to determine the exact chemical structure and synthesis coenzyme Q10 in laboratory.

The first organized clinical trial in humans was performed by Yamamura of Osaka University, Japan in 1965, where coenzyme Q7 was given to patients with heart failure.

In 1972, Dr. Folkers and Italian researcher, Dr, Littaru, documented a coenzyme Q10 deficiency in human heart disease. Also in 1970s, researchers discovered that coenzyme Q10 had antioxidant abilities.

In 1977 Peter Mitchell receives Nobel Prize for his coenzyme research and energy transfer processes within the mitochondria of the cell.
History of coenzyme Q10

The Discovery of DNA

In 1953, two young scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick made one of the most important
discoveries of the twentieth century.

They worked out the structure of DNA - large molecule found in every cell of our body that
contains all the information required for life.

Watson and Crick used experimental results obtained buy Rosalind Franklin to help build their model showing the shape of DNA.

Crick and Watson wrote-up their findings and had them published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953 in an article titled “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”.

Following the discovery of the first practical microspore in late 17th century by A. van
Leeuwenhoek (1623-1723), research was dominated for several decades by cytologists doing
observations of all kind of material under the microsphere.

In 1665, Robert Hooke named cells the smallest living biological structure surrounded by walls observed in cork.

It was in 1869, a young Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher isolated a substance that he called ‘nuclein’, now known as DNA.

Only a few years earlier Gregor Mendel had finished series of experiments with peas and made observations that turned out to be so closely connected the the finding of nuclein. This was the starting of the science of genetics.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was the one who study the DNA and get credit for the discovery of double helix.

And it was Rosalind Franklin (1921-1958), whose X-ray images of DNA crystals gave clues about the double helical structure.

Franklin used –x-ray diffraction techniques, to experimentally examine the structure of DNA.

The earliest studies reveled genes to be discrete factors that were retained throughout the life of an organism and then passed on tor each of its progeny.

Over the following century, these hereditary factors were shown to reside on chromosomes and to consist of DNA, a macromolecule with extraordinary properties.

The discovery of the form of the DNA molecule and its code is considered by many to be one of the most important discoveries of modern science.

It wasn’t until the mid seventies, with new technologies of replicating and ‘cutting and pasting’ DNA that the genetic information explosion took off.
The Discovery of DNA