1927-

South African geneticist responsible for many significant advances in genetic research. Brenner confirmed in 1964 that genetic information is stored in sequence along chromosomes, and that the order corresponds to the sequence of amino acids that make up a protein. In 1967 he and Francis Crick decoded the DNA "stop" codon, one of the last to be deciphered. Later, Brenner and his colleagues set out to learn everything possible about an entire organism, C. elegans (a small nematode), setting the stage for the Human Genome Project.