Episode 374: Neil Shubin
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Learning About the Future by Understanding the Past
Understanding the origins of species and the evolution of our planet has really become a multidisciplinary field. In order to understand how birds evolved to fly, or fish evolved to walk on land, you have to look at fossils. But you also need to think about the molecular biology part of that story.
Neil Shubin is a professor of biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. He’s the author of numerous books, including Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA and Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.
Neil and Greg discuss the importance of understanding both biology and geology when looking at evolution, the mysteries that still exist in our DNA, and what Neil was doing with thousands of dead salamanders in his lab once.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Evolution is not designing things for a blueprint
11:10: Evolution is not designing things from a blueprint; there's not a blueprint, and everything's designed from scratch, fit for purpose. No, what you're having is you have ancestors that are being modified to make new things. So you're modifying ancient genes to make new structures. That means history is very important; history provides constraints because you're not starting from scratch, but it also creates opportunities because you’re in a particular environment with particular genes, you may be in the right place at the right time.
Does evolution happen at variable speed?
10:41: Evolution happens, by all accounts, very gradually from generation to the next. But when we look at it over geological time—which is the window we have as paleontologists—it may look rapid, but it's probably very slow if you were on the ground watching it and measuring it year to year.
Evolution is not about rewiring, but about rerouting
15:14: When you think about these molecular switches—what we're looking at—is that you can look at not only where a gene is active in the body, but you can also look at the sort of almost the genetic software that tells the gene when and where to be active. And it turns out a lot of the big changes in evolution are not as much about evolving new genes—they're about using old genes in new ways: that is, changing when and where they're active. That's where those switches—the genetic regulatory elements—come into being. In part, there's a lot to that story, but the crazy thesis is right there.
How is it possible to be both broadened and specialized at the same time?
40:13: So collaboration is the answer to that. So, what we try to foster is a culture of collaboration among scientists. That is, when I train scientists in the lab, I don't ask them to be experts in both paleontology and development. I ask them to be experts in the empiricism of one field, particularly in parts of the fields that are relevant to them. But I insist that they be able to have critical thinking. And creative thinking across the fields, but their empiricisms, the way they do their work, whether it's lab work or field work or sometimes both, they have to specialize there.
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