Messenger RNA is identified

In 1961, researchers at Caltech and the Pasteur Institute independently confirmed a molecule that carries genetic instructions out of the cell nucleus to the ribosomes, the cell's protein factories. They called it messenger RNA, or mRNA. It exists only briefly before breaking down, a property that decades later became both the technology's biggest engineering obstacle and, once solved, one of its safety advantages: mRNA delivers its instructions and then disappears, without altering a cell's own DNA.