developed from what came before. The feeling of missing something is the same one you'd get starting a novel halfway through, or catching a TV soap opera for the first time. It won't make much sense if you don't know the story so far. Biotechnology is only the current chapter in a story that began a long time ago.

The path to genetic manipulation can be said to have started in 1665, when the English scientist Robert Hooke published a review of some observations he'd made while peering down a microscope. Describing the tiny spaces surrounded by walls that he saw in samples of cork, Hooke coined the word "cell." He saw similar structures in other plant tissues and supposed their function was to transport substances through the plant.

Ten years after Hooke's publication came out, a Dutch draper and skillful lens grinder named Anton van Leeuwenhoek was making history, designing microscopes with magnifying powers as great as 270 times. Using these instruments, he became the first person to observe and describe microorganisms, which he called "very little animalcules."

Leeuwenhoek accurately calculated the size of bacteria 25 times smaller than red blood cells, and discovered the existence of sperm cells in semen from humans and other animals. Until then, scientists believed that the development of an animal began with the egg, which the mysterious male contribution stimulated to grow. Leeuwenhoek revealed for the first time that fertilization involved both male and female cells equally.