The proposal phase for the foundation of the Association started in the 1980s and stemmed from the need to set up a culturally motivated and scientifically qualified academic group, belonging to the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. A group of teachers who, in the academic-scientific institutional panorama of Italian Biology and Genetics, were capable of interacting with the ministerial and university institutional levels with a single language and a single purpose, but also characterized by the contents of the university courses and especially by the scientific activity in the various universities. It should be remembered that “Biology for Medical Doctors”, before the 1980s, was taught mainly by regular Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, Biochemistry and Genetics teachers. So much so that the first text of “Notions of General Biology” in Italy is dated 1929 and was written by Umberto Pierantoni, a zoologist of great fame, to whom we owe much for his seminal contribution to the endosymbiotic theory of mitochondria. It was, therefore, necessary to mix several cultural souls among the “new” Biology teachers belonging to the Faculties of Medicine and Surgery.

Finally, after several meetings, both collegial and in small groups, and after difficult and troubled years, on November 6, 1990, the Teachers Assembly of the Full and Associate Professors approved the Statute of the Association that was to be set up. “A committee of 5 teachers” was delegated “to curate the formalization of the constitutive act and to establish the provisional Board”. At the same time, the Assembly appointed Professors Sergio Barlati, Ranieri Cancedda, Giovanni Chieffi, Giacomo De Leo, and Franco Mangia as members of the above mentioned Committee. They constituted the “Academic and Scientific Cultural Association” called “Italian Association of Biology and General and Molecular Genetics”, “A.I.B.G.”, on December 13, 1990, with an act of the notary M. Percuoco, in Naples. The same Professors constituted the “Provisional Board”, appointing Chieffi as President, and Barlati as Secretary.

The Association had its legal headquarters in Brescia, at the University Department of “Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnologies” (headquarters of the Secretary) and accepted as members, upon request, “Full and Associate Professors of Biological and Genetic subjects related… to the [contest] grouping E052 – Applied Biology”, who were exclusively on duty at Medical Faculties at the time.

In the first application phase, the Statute established an Assembly for the definition of the governing bodies. These were set up considering colleagues who were “active” during the proposal phase but also taking into account the geographical distribution of the universities, a criterion since then always maintained to ensure an efficient representation of their peculiarities and requests.

Therefore the first composition was: President Giovanni Chieffi (Naples), Secretary-Treasurer Sergio Barlati (Brescia), Board members: Ranieri Cancedda (Genoa), Giacomo De Leo (Palermo), Antonio Fantoni (Rome), Franco Mangia (Rome) , Maria Luisa Tenchini (Milan).

Over time, the Association has implemented three statutory changes (in 1997, 2006 and 2017). Firstly, in order to adapt it to the changing Scientific-Disciplinary (contest) Sectors (SSD E052; E06X; BIO/13) and to allow University researchers to join the AIBG too. Then, changes were so as to modify the period of validity of the members of the governing bodies and finally to form a Scientific Association no longer linked to the SSDs but open to all those having a qualified curriculum and interest mainly in fields related to Biology and Genetics as specified in the Statute.