Genes, Belief & Biotechnology
Date: Sunday 19th June, Time: 1.00 - 3.30pm
Molecular Biology & Evolution 2005 in conjunction with the Genetics Society of AustralAsia Annual meeting
Venue: Aotea Centre, Auckland
Professor Axel Meyer
Lecture title: Chance and Necessity in Evolution
Abstract: What is the role of chance and are there rules or even laws that dictate a necessary, deterministic outcome of evolution? What are species, how different are they from each other, and do new ones originate through necessity or by chance alone? Are all types of organisms equally affected by the seemingly random doom of mass extinctions? These are old questions that continue to be debated vigorously even until today, 150 years after Darwin. In the last decade increasingly genetic information based on DNA-sequences of genes and entire genomes are used to tackle questions about the evolutionary past of life on this planet. Seemingly random mutations afflict genes, yet, the comparative analyses of gene networks and entire genomes recently demonstrated an unexpected degree of genetic conservation even between morphologically highly divergent organisms that are separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. For example, “eye genes” were found to be surprisingly exchangeable between flies and mice whose eyes differ markedly, and humans and our closest relatives the chimpanzees differ by only about 1% in our genetic makeup. This raises the question of how the paradox between astonishing genomic conservation and rampant biological diversity can be solved.
Biographical information: Professor Dr. Axel Meyer holds the chair for Zoology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Konstanz in Germany. He studied biology, chemistry and physics at the Universities of Marburg and Kiel in Germany and moved 1982 to the USA where he studied biology at the University of Miami, the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D. 1988 in Zoology) and Harvard University. From 1988 to 1990 he held a Sloan-Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship with professor Allan C. Wilson at the Biochemistry Department in Berkeley. From 1990 to 1997 he was a professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York before he returned to Germany for his present post.
Prof Meyer is the recipient of several fellowships and prizes including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Miller-Research Professorship at Berkeley, and the Science Prize of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.
His main research interests are the study of the origins of biological and genetic diversity, and the comparative analyses of genomes.
Jim Watson
Lecture title: The Evolution of Sustainability
Abstract: For centuries economic development has been driven by land, climate, geography, and an ingenuity often borne out of scarce resources. The evolution of society has closely followed plant and livestock breeding, increasing agricultural intensity, and, colonisation of new territories to provide new resources for wealth creation. For the past century oil has been the dominant resource of economic growth.
Agriculture today is being shaped today by the application of the tools of modern molecular biology to use processes from living systems to increase crop diversity and yield – biotechnology - and the growing need to adopt new and sustainable farming practices. The current practice of high fertiliser use, herbicide and pesticide application and irrigation employed to maintain high crop yields is unlikely to be sustainable without increasing damage to soils and the environment generally. And we can’t ignore our oil economy and the cost of energy for the agricultural industry.
“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.” The quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country’s oil minister three decades ago. Sheikh Yamani first came to the world’s attention during the Arab oil embargo of the United States, which began three decades ago and whose effects altered the course of modern economic and political history.
A generation after the embargo began, the facts seem plain: the world remains addicted to Middle Eastern oil. So why is Sheikh Yamani predicting the end of the Oil Age? Because he believes that something fundamental has shifted since that first oil shock. Advances in technology are beginning to offer a way for economies, especially those of the developed world, to diversify their supplies of energy and reduce their demand for petroleum, thus lossening the grip of oil and the countries that produce it.
It’s biotechnology that has the potential to provide energy security and sustainability in the near future. Woody crops are a source of energy through the extraction of cellulose and lignin from woody biomass and the fermentation of cellulose to ethanol, for use as a transport fuel to replace petrol, and the use of lignin to produce chemicals and biomaterials to replace petrochemical products. They are serious challenges to the oil industry. The industry needs new woody crops and new biotechnologies to make a serious dent in the oil economy.
This talk will explore the evolution of biotechnology, energy resources and the environmental sustainability issues the next generation faces unless science provides smart solutions to economic growth and social well-being.
Biographical information: Dr James Watson founded Genesis Research & Development Corporation Limited, a biotechnology company 1994. He was Chief Executive until December, 2004 when he moved to the position of Chief Scientist.
He received his PhD from the University of Auckland in 1967 then worked as a postdoctoral fellow worked at Syntex Corporation in Palo Alto, California (1967-69) and the Salk Institute (1969-75). He has held Professorships at the University of California, Irvine (1976-81) and the University of Auckland (1981-93) serving as Head of the Department of Molecular Medicine (1983–93).
His field of endeavour has been immunology. He was a Director of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (1999–2002) and President of the Australasian Society of Immunology (2001). He is currently President of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Member of the Government’s Growth and Innovation Advisory Board from 2001 to 2005, and a Trustee of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.
Jennifer Marshall Graves
Lecture title: Sex chromosomes and the future of men
Abstract: In humans and other mammals, females have two X chromosomes, and males a single X and a Y. The Y chromosome is male determining because it bears a gene (SRY) that switches on the development of testis, which pumps out male hormones. The X is a decent, ordinary chromosome, though it has more than its fair share of genes involved in male sex and reproduction – and maybe sexual behaviour and intelligence. But the Y is a genetic wasteland – small and full of genetic junk, bearing only 45 genes, mostly active only in testis.
The X and Y evolved from an ordinary chromosome pair as the Y degraded progressively. Comparing Y chromosomes between distantly related mammals, as well as their antecedents in birds and reptiles, reveals links to ancient bird/reptile sex chromosomes. The Y chromosome looks like a degraded relic of the X because most of its genes – even those with important male-specific functions – have partners on the X from which they evolved.
The human Y chromosome is running out of time. At the rate it is degrading, it will lose its last 45 genes in just 10 million years. What happens when SRY goes? Since imprinting means we can’t go in for a female-only lifestyle, would this be the end of the line for our species? The good news is that SRY has been lost in at least two groups of rodents. Somewhere else in the genome, a new sex determining gene must have taken over the function of SRY. So as the human Y runs out of options, new sex determining genes may evolve, maybe leading to different hominid species.
Biographical information: Professor Jenny Graves’ work on Australian mammals provides a unique view on the way that the human genome evolved and how it works. Geneticists use variation to test the influence of genes on characteristics – she has capitalized on the very distant relationship between humans, kangaroos and platypus to provide enough variation to study even very fundamental genetic processes, like sex and embryonic development.
One of her group’s big successes was in her research on sex and sex chromosomes. It was their work on kangaroos that first showed that the prevailing hot favourite candidate for the sex determining factor was the wrong gene, and it was her PhD graduate who then went on to clone the right gene (SRY) in London. SRY is on the Y chromosome, which is present only in males. The Y is a very odd chromosome – it is small, and largely made of junk. Professor Graves’ group discovered from comparisons across species that the Y is just a broken down X chromosome. It has lost most of its original 1000-odd genes at such a rate that Jenny Graves predicts that the Y will disappear in another 10 million years or so, as has already happened in some weird rodents.
Most recently, Jenny Graves has lead the effort to see that the genomes of the kangaroo and the platypus are sequenced, marshalling resources in Australia and overseas and building Australian teams and international collaborations. The genomes of these unique animals are treasure troves full of unknown genes, and information on how they work. Being able to compare sequences in and around he same genes in humans and kangaroos can identify new human genes and the signals that switch them on and off, and can also lead to the discovery of genes that control marsupial-specific characteristics that might be handy for agriculture and medicine.