With a title like that how could you not want to read John Logsdon's new blog? Yesterday was his first post but I'm looking forward to lots more in the near future [Sex, Genes & Evolution]. John is a molecular evolutionary biologist in the Biology Department at the University of Iowa. He has published a number of papers with W. Ford Doolittle from the time he was at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. These include several papers with Arlin Stoltzfus on the evolution of introns. The Stoltzfus/Logsdon papers from this era were among the best papers to refute the intron-early hypothesis formerly championed by their mentor, Ford Doolittle. One of the things this demonstrates is that it's possible to disagree with your boss and survive!
Their chief target at the time was the Gilbert lab. John Logsdon was one of the participants in the famous online BioMedNet debate on The Origin and Evolution of Introns in November 1996—back in the time before blogs. This was mostly a debate between members of the Ford Doolittle lab and the Gilbert lab. Unfortunately, the transcript is no longer available. It was required reading in most molecular biology courses in the late 1990's. (I wish we had more debates like that.)
The Logsdon lab is interested in sex in protists, specifically the evolution of genes involved in recombination and meiosis (e.g., RAD51). John participates in a larger project that is trying to define the eukaryotic tree of life. As most of you know, the relationship of protists is controversial and the collaborative project intends to try and resolve the controversies. It not going to be easy to figure out the early history of eukaryotic evolution. This is a problem that has perplexed evolutionary biologists for several decades.The Iowa biologists' goal is to sequence nine genes (actin, α- and β- tubulin, cob, EF-1 a , Hsp70, Hsp90, RPB1, SSU rRNA) from at least 200 different protists [ Assembling the Tree of Eukaryotic Microbial Diversity and Eu-Tree].
I'm excited about this project because they're looking at the best gene (HSP70). I hope he won't be disappointed to learn that my undergraduates have already solved the problem [The Evolution of the HSP70 Gene Family]. But all is not lost, those other genes might make a minor contribution to understanding evolution.
Welcome to science blogging, John.
Now, why not jump right in and describe your favorite hypothesis for why we have sex? I'm guessing you're a fan of repair, right?
I don't know about the science, but that fellow is a prime candidate for the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Larry, for that great PR. I have followed your work for some time.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the intron evolution issues still are on my mind, I haven't published much in this area for a few years. I had forgotten about the BioMedNet debate. You are right; that was kind-of a pre-blog experiment. I wonder if anyone still has the transcript of the debate; it would fun to look back on. If memory serves me, it was me, Arlin, Will Fischer, Manyuan Long, and perhaps some others. The intron evolution field has re-emerged in the past few years, with strong contributions emanating from the wealth of genome data now available.
Thanks for pointing out our Eukaryotic Tree of Life Project. It is a collaborative venture, also involving my U. Iowa colleague, Debashish Bhattacharya, Laura Katz at Smith College, Paddy Patterson at MBL, Jeff Cole at ATCC and John Huelsenbeck at UCSD.
As it turns out, we have divvied up the responsibilities, and Debashish's lab is doing HSP70. My lab is doing Hsp90 and RPB1. We are making some good progress on this difficult problem. Stay tuned for updates...
Great idea for my first "sexy" post!
Why we have sex:
ReplyDeleteDisruption of linkage disequilibrium? I'm thinking of the work of Doris Bachtrog and Aneil Agrawal (working separately) on deleterious mutations and Muller's Ratchet.
My thought is that DNA repair provides the mechanism or exaptation before the evolution of sex, but the real selective benefits don't kick in until you can use recombination to shuffle out bad allele combinations in linked genes. I probably need to read Sally Otto's work more often.