Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer's historic experiment used techniques to cut and paste DNA to create the first custom-made organism containing recombined or "recombinant" DNA.
Herbert Boyer: Former varsity lineman turned biotech bigwig. Expert at cutting DNA before most people knew it could be done.
Stanley Cohen: A born tinkerer; figured out the trick of using loops of DNA called plasmids to transform bacterial DNA
Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer inserted the recombinant DNA molecule they created into E. coli bacteria by means of a plasmid, thereby inducing the uptake and expression of a foreign DNA sequence known as "transformation."