Monday, March 02, 2015
Genomes and junk DNA
Here's your chance to hear about genomes and junk DNA from one of the world's leading experts. The seminar is at the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada) in the Medical Sciences Building. It's on Wednesday, March 4th—only two days form today! The seminar room (Rm 2172) is right around the corner from Tim Hortons. Ryan is from the University of Guelph. How Canadian can you get, eh?
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I would be nice if you could record it on HD Video and post it on YouTube.
I second that!
Ain't gonna happen. It's very difficult, and expensive, to make an effective recording of these kind of seminars.
That's nonsense. All someone has to do is bring any point-and-shoot camera and tripod and set it up in the back of the lecture hall. May have to record in half-hour chunks. Nothing could be easier. Then put it on YouTube for free. If you can't find an adult who knows how to do it, ask any teenager.
Lou Jost
You are highly underestimating how difficult this can be.
I have to agree with Lou here.
Also, surely any respectable university has some kind of media department where someone is up for recording the talks? At least record the lecture by T Ryan Gregory?
The university of Toronto has a youtube channel where they post videos of all sorts of things (presumably as advertisement for the university among other things), can't you get a hold of them and tell them about this unique opportunity? :)
The University of Geulph? Did someone have a coughing fit when they devised the name? (same question even when it's spelled right :-) )
I betcha that the Population Health and Policy Conference had a huge budget for video recording.
Perhaps in the interest of "encourag[ing] the fullest, critical investigation of scientific and social issues" Bruce Kidd, O.C., Ph.D., LL.D.,Vice-President and Principal, University of Toronto Scarborough,Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (my what a very long title, try saying that in one breath) could make some of these resources available for your conference.
Not "All Genomes Great and Small"?
The Lord God made them all?
Thank-you for pointing out the typo.
Why are you making fun of a name with such a long and illustrious history?
I am astonished that some people think a teenager with a camera could make a decent video of a typical biochemistry seminar. I assume they've never been to one.
Can anyone attend this?
Yes but you might feel a bit intimidated if you've never been to one of these before. Come to my office at 4pm and I'll go with you to the seminar (and Tim Hortons).
There's now a hockey arena with a Tim Horton's 20 minutes from where I live.
Civilization comes to the US!
(And I do wish I was near enough to attend the seminar. Looks wonderful.)
It IS easy, unless the speaker is far from the slide screen. Even then it would only take two point-and-shoot cameras and some quick editing. I am sure you get volunteers here to do the editing. Heck, I volunteer to do it. Give me video of the slides and of the speaker (again, trivially easy to obtain) and I'll interweave them. Won't be TV quality but would convey the content well.
Lou Jost
Seriously, recording seminars is not that hard; we do it at as a manner of course where I work because we have various locations so not everyone can attend locally. Basically the trick is 1) use the signal from the projector rather than a camera 2) have the speaker use the mouse pointer rather than a laser pointer in the talk -- that way the projector signal contains the pointing information. Then transmit the speaker's microphone signal for the sound. Yes, you don't get a picture of the speaker this way, but generally scientists aren't all that photogenic anyway so no great loss.
Thanks guys! I'll be there for 4pm, and I'll let my cousin know!
I'd prefer to be a Ghibelline rather than a Guelph, myself.
It's not technically difficult, but it requires cooperation for the venue staff. Video and audio recording has changed just in the last couple of years. All it requires is a 12 year old with access to the PA system and to the computer hosting the slides.
Dr. Moran,
A while back you shredded me pretty badly when I brought up the topic of ultra-conserved DNA. You said that there was no ultra-conserved DNA between human and bacteria. Further, you said that there basically wasn't better than about 30% conservation (if I recall correctly.)
I stand puzzled at the following quote I bumped into today:
"The DNA sequences that code for ribosomal RNA contain long stretches of bases that are perfectly conserved throughout evolution. Unlike the ultra-conserved elements uncovered in this study, though, ribosomal RNA is ancient and is common to all species. "
http://currents.ucsc.edu/03-04/05-10/genome.html
UCSC, hmmm.
I suspect the discussion was about what counts as "highly conserved."
I may have said that the most highly conserved genes show about 30% sequence identity between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. That 30% includes moderately long stretches that can be absolutely identical in all species.
You don't even need access to the hosting computer. I know because my talks at the Carnegie Institution were recently recorded using exactly the set-up I described (simple bridge camera on a tripod, no special mike or connection to the audio, and no connection to my computer); the president of the Carnegie Institution didn't even bother his media staff, he made them himself with his own little camera and edited them before dinner the same night, and handed them to me at dinner. This was a very busy man with astronomically large projects on his plate, yet he found the time to do this.The quality is good.
This is not rocket science, and it is amazing to me that some hosts are so negative about it. With a tiny effort, they could give their speakers the opportunity to be heard by the whole world instead of by a hundred people.
Lou Jost
@unknown
Please post your video on YouTube so we can have at look at what you think is good quality.
A conference on a topic that has not been explored?
The point is: The genome is made of 2% protein coding DNA, 25% of intronic and regulatory sequences, 15% of ncDNA that is species specific, 45% of TEs, and 15% of repetitive sequences not related to TEs.
Most of it is not explored.
Why don’t you guys go to your lab and perform some experiments to exclude function for socalled junk DNA.
If the function of TEs are the mechanism to induce variation, as has been proposed previously, how are you gonna measure that?
Why doesn’t the Darwin community make a junk-DNA free organism? I bet it will not be able to — what they call– evolve (due to lack of variation-inducing genetic elements).
Evolution should not be about conservation, but about change. After all it is defined as change over time. Not as conservation over time.
Everything has been frontloaded in the genome, including a mechanism to adapt/speciate/"evolve". These mechanisms are found in the socalled junk DNA (TEs; short for: transposable and transposed elements) and have not been recognized by the Darwinian establishment due to the junk-DNA hypothesis (which has been propagated as fact).
And do we have to expect something like this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25674102
The null hypotheis is that ncRNA is junk. This is very hard to establish if we are dealing with variation-inducing genetic elements and rather similar to posing that redundant genes do not have a function (although they have but due to operating in networks cannot be measured by selection experiments).
Btw, reading the above linked paper I noticed a certain Prof L. Moran in the acknowledgements of the paper. Is must be you, Prof Moran, or isn't it?
Peer, Knockout mice experiments have been done where most of the so-called junk DNA was removed. The mice were fine in the sterile- lab
You have the history wrong. It was actually believed that the entire genome was functional in the beginning (because, the argument went, natural selection only retains things that work), and there are still "Darwinists" who believe it is, but it was subsequently discovered that this simply couldn't be true.
You can't be frequenting this blog without knowing the evidence for junk DNA; genetic load, variations in genome size, the mechanism by which it is generated and so on.
So I take it since you apparently believe there is little to no junk-DNA, you have evidence that refutes all the arguments for junk-DNA right? Care to take a stab at the onion test and the genetic load argument?
Obviously, I am too young to have witnessed any of this, so I may be completely wrong, but I am not so sure it was ever actively believed the whole genome was functional for a significant amount of time before it was realized it could not be true. There is just a decade or so separating the discovery of the structure of DNA and the first appearances of the phrase "junk DNA", and the population genetic arguments were developed in the 60s, which is when it first could have made sense to talk about functionality of the whole genome anyway, as this is when people worked out the genetic code, the details of how gene expression works, and the first insights into the mechanisms of gene regulation. So it seems that the idea that the genome is not completely functional developed almost immediately after/simultaneously with the basic understanding of what a genome really is and how it works. That, of course, does not mean everyone was aware of it or understood it, but that's still the case even today.
I don't dispute that the view only lived for a short time before it had to change due to the facts, but it would be a big surprise to me if anyone actually went into the elucidation of the genome already expecting large amounts of it to be junk if they didn't already have evidence that pointed in this direction.
Even among people who didn't consider themselves "adaptationists" it must have been a surprise working these things out, particularly if they were not aware of a mechanism that could produce and sustain the presence of such quantities of junk-DNA over evolutionary time.
You don't have to be an adaptationist to still concede it makes sense to think that natural selection would eventually get rid of excess DNA being carried around, particularly when the existence of such DNA manifestly must have an energetic cost at replication.
The way l look at it is that not all but most of jDNA may turnout to have some "function". I have no opinion yet but it seems that knockouts show that jDNA has no function unless the organism is stressed. The car spare has no function unless you get a flat. This seems to be the rhetoric among the supporters of functional jDNA
Be aware that nobody ever claimed the whole genome used to be or is functional. The idea of junk is an invention of Susomo Ohno, a seventies biologist of the neutralist school.
The whole genome can however be explained by an original genome frontloaded with all the coding information (protein and RNA genes) and a mechanism to adapt/speciate/evolve.
All that is required is shuffling, deletion and/or duplication, hence changing the order of the coding and regulatory parts of the genome throught variation-inducing genetic elements (also know as transposable and transposed elements; short: TEs).
Selection might do a bit of the survival of the resulting genetics, but as an evolutionary force it is completely overrated.
There is ample evidence, now, that TEs are indeed the drivers of evolution. What is more, we can understand the origin of retroviruses from TEs, to be precise from transposable elements known as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). In fact, ERVs simply had to pick up two or three genes to evolve into HIV or influenza transmitters.
That's the most parsimonous explanation for the origin of retroviruses and leaves the Darwinian completely wanting for scientific arguments for the origin of this type of diseases. It also shows that God did not invent diseases, but they simple emerged from genomes, from VIGEs (known as ERVs).
Furthermore, the complete lack of hypothesis for the existence of LINEs (which make up the major part of tranposons in humans) further support the fronloading hypothesis.
Frontloading is the only way to really understand biology.
Try to understand biology from a 3D stance, not from the linear Darwinian view.
We know of plenty of no-phenotype knockouts in real life, in man, in monkeys, in nature. CCR5 is one (in human), ACTN4 (in human), angiogenin (in monkey), etc.
Every man has 99 genes homozygously inactivated. Not all the same, of course. And ....You won't find them in the hospital. These are natural non-phenotype knockouts in man.
"The car spare has no function unless you get a flat. This seems to be the rhetoric among the supporters of functional jDNA..."
This has also been put forwqard as an argument to explain genetic redundancy. The problem is however: time.
You cannot stabilize a redundant information for millions of years.
You can get rid of this problem by eliminating time, the socalled (imaginary) billions of years.Then, you will come into the YEC field.
Some cars escape sans dent,
But strategies are different.
Some alas have accident,
And not just bumper bent.
Same for tyres that go flat,
That get us into such a spat.
Some carry just one spare,
Others far from base,
Trail a hundred just in case.
Others have tricks under belt,
No baggage, we go svelt!
So we use our humble wit,
Zero tyres, just repair kit.
Others in land of sun,
With tube empty,
Take air from three,
To give to one!
No one-fits-all,
No excess fattegy,
But what recalls,
Evolution’s strategy!
You are a YEC? Please say it isn't so.
"The whole genome can however be explained by an original genome frontloaded with all the coding information (protein and RNA genes) and a mechanism to adapt/speciate/evolve."
No it can't, because there's absolutely zero evidence of a mechanism that would conserve genes critical for, for example whale evolution, over millions of generations until such a time as they are needed. If genes aren't under some kind of purifying selection, they invariably mutate beyond reckognition. And the evidence is that the entire genome is randomly mutating for well-known biochemical reasons (as evidenced in detected substitutional biases from both direct empirical experiments and phylogenetic reconstructions).
In fact, one of the lines of evidence for junk is that large swathes of the genome is not under purifying selection, which means it IS mutating, and so simply cannot constitute "front loaded" genes for some future use millions of years from now. Because when it comes to them suddenly having to be useful, they would have mutated to destruction.
Front loading is a totally ad-hoc rationalization that can't even explain all the details of the facts. Is has no quantitatively falsifiable predictions, you will have to re-erect the hypothesis in a totally ad-hoc fashion every time you see a new gene with no detectable sequence similarity in any other species.
Oh, a new gene exists in this species? Well that's because the designer intervened and "front loaded" the genome some time in the recent past. There's no way to predict how often, or where in the genome, or what genes or what those genes will be doing, even at a level of rough approximation - the designer will be intervening to "front load" a genome in some lineage.
So front-loading requires a young Earth. And to defend a young Earth, you have to erect even more ad-hoc rationalizations about (unobserved)absurdly high rates of decay of atomic nuclei in the past, (unobserved)absurdly high rates of sedimentation in the past etc. etc. (all of which have no independent justification other than an a priori commitment to a young Earth. In other words, coming to the table with a presupposed conclusion and then trying to make the evidence fit).
Sorry to say it, but this just makes front-loading all the more baseless, ad-hoc and evidently false.
The principle of rough uniformity is non-negotiable (and follows in part from Occam's Razor), otherwise you will find yourself in the absurd position that you have to concede it could have been raining cats and dogs instead of drops of water 3000 years ago, because you will have given up the restriction on endless ad-hoc hypothesizing to account for inconvenient facts.
Young Earth creationism is pure religionut make-believe. The proponents of creationism even publicly declare that they put their prior commitment to religious scriptures over and above any and all contrary evidence. It's conclusion first, evidence later.
Have fun in your fantasy land that doesn't really care about reason, science or evidence.
Correction: "And the evidence is that the entire genome..."
Should of course read "... almost the entire genome". The protein coding, and to a lesser extend, regulatory regions are all under some degree of purifying selection.
«You cannot stabilize a redundant information for millions of years.» So you say...
"I have no opinion yet but it seems that knockouts show that jDNA has no function unless the organism is stressed."
I'd be interested in seeing some references to such experiments.
"The car spare has no function unless you get a flat."
But the car spare won't function if the metal has rusted to dust and the rubber dried to crusty plastic because it hasn't been maintained for millions of years.
musicoflife.co.uk/pdfs/SelfishGenes.pdf
www.mcisb.org/news/SBseminar/talks/Noble.pdf
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24381249
Mikkel,
"But the car spare won't function if the metal has rusted to dust and the rubber dried to crusty plastic because it hasn't been maintained for millions of years."
Neither will the car function unless you do maintenance and regularly replace the all parts
"In fact, ERVs simply had to pick up two or three genes to evolve into HIV or influenza transmitters....
It also shows that God did not invent diseases, but they simple emerged from genomes, from VIGEs (known as ERVs)."
Under your baseless front-loading rationalization, god would have "front loaded" the genomes of organisms with the genes that would eventually(under your rationalization) become incorporated in diseases. So first you rationalize that the genomes of some ancient organisms were front loaded with the genes necessary for all future evolution and speciation, then you turn around and absolve god for the responsibility of what subsequently evolves from this overstocked genome.
Having your cake and eating it too?
@Johnny
The first link doen't seem to work, the 2nd is a powerpoint presentation about a much broader subject. The last does not mention anything about the degree of sequence conservation of the lncRNA's knocked out, so there's no way to elucidate from the presented material whether these RNA's would have been suspected of being junk. All they did was make sure they weren't associated with any known protein coding regions. But nobody has claimed that non coding, transcribed DNA is by definition junk. Particularly not when the RNA is shown to be transcribed well above noisy levels in particular tissues.
It seems you have confused non-coding with junk.
To recap, the argument is not that all DNA that doesn't code for proteins is therefore junk. And the argument is also not that just because we haven't yet found out what this particular piece of transcribed-to-RNA gene does, it must be junk.
You should first try to understand the arguments for the existence of junk DNA (and what the properties of this DNA is that makes biochemists think it is actually junk). None of you links have shown any attempt to test bona-fide-thought-to-be-junk DNA for function, and then found any.
"Mikkel,
"But the car spare won't function if the metal has rusted to dust and the rubber dried to crusty plastic because it hasn't been maintained for millions of years."
Neither will the car function unless you do maintenance and regularly replace the all parts"
But that's exactly one of the arguments for junkDNA. When we find large swathes of DNA with little to no sequence conservation, and that we can further see that it must have degrated from previously functional DNA(pseudogenes is an example), isn't this then actually evidence that it is junk? It is evidenly not being conserved(maintained), so it's slowly degrading as one would expect from junk.
"Try to understand biology from a 3D stance, not from the linear Darwinian view."
What the hell does this post-modernist technobabble even mean?
"Why doesn’t the Darwin community make a junk-DNA free organism? I bet it will not be able to — what they call– evolve (due to lack of variation-inducing genetic elements)."
Why doesn't the discovery institute, who has a boner for function, do such an experiment? They seem to be much busier writing articles about Jesus-belief and Darwin-Nazism links than doing any actual research in their "BioLogic" institute.
@Peer Terborg: "The idea of junk is an invention of Susomo Ohno, a seventies biologist of the neutralist school."
And how did he become a "neutralist" in the first place?
Mikkel, sorry I'm at home today sick with the flu so I have no access to my office computer. I tried to find the right links but it looks like I messed up.
Mikkel,
I was only able to locate the press article on the theme but not the actual papers. Sorry
www.huffingtonpost.com/.../replace-the-modern-sythes_b_5284211.html
Peer Torberg, There’s an interesting natural experiment testing the “junk DNA” hypothesis. Some members of the plant family Lentibulariaceae (carnivorous bladderworts, butterworts, etc.) have greatly reduced genome size, compared to other plants.
From abstract from Ibarra-Laclette et al. 2013: “Despite its tiny size, the U. gibba genome accommodates a typical number of genes for a plant, with the main difference from other plant genomes arising from a drastic reduction in non-genic DNA. . . . The compressed architecture of the U. gibba genome indicates that a small fraction of intergenic DNA, with few or no active retrotransposons, is sufficient to regulate and integrate all the processes required for the development and reproduction of a complex organism.”
From elsewhere in paper: “Intergenic sequence contraction in the U. gibba genome is particularly apparent in the paucity of repetitive DNA and mobile elements”. The paper also notes a relative lack of introns in U. gibba genes.
Therefore, a lot of the genome in plants is unnecessary. It is junk. That seems true of humans, also, though of course different experimental data supports that extension of the hypothesis. Your untestable “unless DNA will be useful in the future” hypothesis can’t be refuted any more than it can be confirmed, but a related paper (Veleba et al. 2014) indicates that even Lentibulariaceae plants with small genomes continue to evolve, suggesting that junk DNA may not be needed for evolution.
References:
Ibarra-Laclette, Enrique, Eric Lyons, Gustavo Hernández-Guzmán, Claudia Anahí Pérez-Torres, Lorenzo Carretero-Paulet, Tien-Hao Chang, Tianying Lan, Andreanna J. Welch, María Jazmín Abraham Juárez, June Simpson, Araceli Fernández-Cortés, Mario Arteaga-Vázquez, Elsa Góngora-Castillo, Gustavo Acevedo-Hernández, Stephan C. Schuster, Heinz Himmelbauer, André E. Minoche, Sen Xu, Michael Lynch, Araceli Oropeza-Aburto, Sergio Alan Cervantes-Pérez, María de Jesús Ortega-Estrada, Jacob Israel Cervantes-Luevano, Todd P. Michael, Todd Mockler, et al. 2013. Architecture and evolution of a minute plant genome. Nature 498:94–98. doi:10.1038/nature12132
Veleba, Adam, Petr Bures, Lubomır Adamec, Petr Smarda, Ivana Lipnerova and Lucie Horova. 2014. Genome size and genomic GC content evolution in the miniature genome-sized family Lentibulariaceae. New Phytologist (2014) 203: 22–28.
Peer Terborg, As evolution is about change, lack of change strikes as intriguing to me. If segments of DNA are conserved across all kingdoms, then changes in this DNA must all be deleterious, and the DNA must have found full optimization by the universal common ancestor.
To the extent that TEs are involved in genome rearrangement (not much: mostly, they just seem to rearrange themselves), they don't keep on performing this role after they lose transpositional ability. Those that fall between genes (the majority) form a significant fraction of the genome. 'Function' does not mean 'did something once'.
What's the point of front-loading then? You want to argue for front-loading of evolvability, but accept that evolution is degradative on neutral sequence, so you determine that the front-loading must have taken place recently, ie before evolution has had time to actually do anything (apart from splatter TEs around like a machine-gunner with a serious twitch)?
There is a hole in your argument, though you may not see what it is. Let's see if I can get a bus through it. Yep, no problem. Now I'm going to try with a Jumbo jet. Wheee! Didn't even touch the sides.
Whether or not I am a YEC....The point is a major part of the genome is unique and functional, yet redundant.
And that makes long age storage problematic. Everybody knows this, a number of selection proposals have been put forward, but no solution found.
"And how did he become a "neutralist" in the first place?"
He was a student of Kimura.
Allan Miller is wrong. TEs function also as recombinational hotspots and because there are so many enuquality faciliate deletions and/or duplication.
This is one of the frontloaded mechanism for the rapid induction of variation/adaptation/speciation. Only atheists don't like it. Neutralist should, because most variation is neutral, yet functional.
I recommend everybody to read John A Davison's Evolutionary Manifesto for a better understanding of biology. I did it years ago and it really is a treasure-trove of not-taugh, almost forgottent biologiocal facts.
If you want to read something out of the box, highly interesting stuff, start there.
No, Allan Miller is right. TEs can only function as recombinational hotspots while they retain significant sequence identity. Broken TEs diverge through neutral evolution. To repeat: "'Function' does not mean 'did something once'.".
Wilson, this is interesting. My hypotheis would be that plant is hardly able to adapt/evolve/speciate. The genome os streamlined, evolution over and out. The only way for the plant is stay put and keep the genome together or go extinct. Evolution no way.
And as such it does NOT support the junk DNA hypothesis, because we are dealing with VARIATION-INDUCING GENETIC ELEMENTS (VIGEs).
Get it?
Mikkel: "No it can't, because there's absolutely zero evidence of a mechanism that would conserve genes critical for, for example whale evolution,..."
It is interesting that you bring up whale evolution...because there is fossil evidence for frontloading both teeth and baleens programs and both active in the Aetiocetus. In Aetiocetus both programs are still functional, while in modern whales (although most opf them are able to interbreed) have (epi)genetically switched of one of both.
This shows frontloading can be proven scientifically on the genetic and fossil record level. Frontloading is true.
Funny how bacteria evolve so fast when they have almost no transposable elements at all. Your hypothesis is falsified, time to add more ad-hoc rationalizations with no evidential justification?
The ancestors of whales had teeth, because they evolved from mammals with teeth. As such there was no "retainment" period of genes for developing teeth without the teeth actually being used and therefore retained by natural selection, instead of just sitting around waiting to be switched on.
Sorry, your ad-hoc rationalization fails.
Aetiocetus was a toothed whale, the genes actually did something, they didn't just sit around waiting to be switched on. Also, you don't actually have the genome of Aetiocetus, all you have is a fossil skeleton.
Extant baleen whales have mutationally degraded genes for teeth, which shows that once the genes aren't actually maintained by natural selection, the genes quickly accumulate mutations and stop working.
Your "front loading" ad-hoc rationalization cannot even explain the facts. You now have to postulate that your designer is magically maintaining genes until such a time as they are needed, after which he stops caring.
"And that makes long age storage problematic. Everybody knows this, a number of selection proposals have been put forward, but no solution found."
Yes, a solution was known of even before the "problem" was found. The history of life goes back 3.8 billion years at least. Not 6000 years.
Major parts of the genome are NOT functional, and it's also not huge swathes of genes waiting for future activation. It's largely ancient and broken genes and dead transposable elements. Dead because they have accumulated mutations for millions of years. Your vitamin-C pseudugene is laughing at your "front-loading" rationalization.
By the way, the number of mutations in that particular pseudogene is not compatible with inactivation within the last 6000 years, given the average mutation rate. So you now have to add EVEN MORE ad-hoc rationalizations, such that the mutation rate was different in the past, or that the vitamin-C gene was specifically targeted for inactivating mutations. Again, all ad-hoc, absolutely zero basis for these rationalizations other than a commitment to a fit the evidence to a young Earth.
You are not interested in truth, you have no respect for reason or science. You are only here to propagandize for religious doctrine.
It's odd that front-loading is thought to be necessary when there's no "front" to "load." In other words, with a young Earth, microbes (assuming one acknowledges their existence even though they aren't mentioned in the Bible - funny how that works, a document written through inspiration from an omniscient being mentions nothing unknown to ordinary humans of the time) must have got here at around the same time as people, dinosaurs and the rest of us, so there's no change of species through time. So what's front loading for (especially as we humans, the goal of Creation from what I understand, are already here)?
@judmarc
Good point. Looks like Peer Terborg is trying to have his cake and eat it too.
There's a similar talk that was recorded at McGill and available online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWSKaNhwUc
Larry, I just uploaded a segment of my talk that I will insert into my foundation's blog. See the segment at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkfNqgCI1eU
It is not perfect but you can hear every word and see the slides. Good enough to convey the content. And it was the first time my friend had ever used the camera to make a video (he had just bought it a few days before). I hope you try to get someone from your circle of friends to video future interesting talks, if your university will not do it.
This segment will go into my conservation foundation's blog,
www.ecomingafoundation.wordpress.com
Lou Jost
Note that my sample was recorded in HD video, so make sure your YouTube player is set to highest quality in order to judge the video's quality. Again,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkfNqgCI1eU
Lou Jost
@unknown
That's pretty good. I see where you are coming from.
Our seminar speakers can't stand in front of the screen like you do so they wouldn't be seen at all if the camera focused on the screen.
I forgot to mention that many seminar speakers would not give permission to have their talks recorded. I know I wouldn't because I usually make lots of references to people in the audience, the physical location, and current events Those don't play well outside of that venue. Also some of my jokes don't turn out to be as funny as I intended.
Larry, thanks for looking at it. As one of the other commenters said, there is really not much need to show the speaker--I'd have been happy if I didn't appear at all. It's the content that is important. As for permissions, yes, that could be a problem, but many speakers would love to reach potentially huge audiences with no extra effort.
In fact I once asked a host not to post a talk in which I felt I had not explained things as clearly as I should have. So I can sympathize with that. But you can always deep-six a video after the talk, if the speaker doesn't like it. Giving him or her the option at the end of the talk is much easier than the speaker realizing that the talk went really well, and then trying to re-enact it (complete with audience reactions and good question-and-answer sessions) to make a video of it!
Lou
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