“Seeing Blue: Fish Vision Discovery Makes Waves In Evolutionary Biology - Science Daily” plus 4 more

Seeing Blue: Fish Vision Discovery Makes Waves In Evolutionary Biology - Science Daily
Student Struck By Hit-And-Run Driver Dies - Wbaltv.com
National Science Foundation awards grant to Oklahoma structural ... - Genetic Engineering News
Intelligent design and the new atheism: Evolution has limits - Mormon Times
Closing of the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals - Market Wire

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Seeing Blue: Fish Vision Discovery Makes Waves In Evolutionary Biology - Science Daily

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 07:56 AM PDT

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2009) — Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched from ultraviolet vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. The discovery is also the first example of an animal deleting a molecule to change its visual spectrum.

Their findings on scabbardfish, linking molecular evolution to functional changes and the possible environmental factors driving them, were published Oct. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This multi-dimensional approach strengthens the case for the importance of adaptive evolution," says evolutionary geneticist Shozo Yokoyama, who led the study. "Building on this framework will take studies of natural selection to the next level."

The research team included Takashi Tada, a post-doctoral fellow in biology, and Ahmet Altun, a post-doctoral fellow in biology and computational chemistry.

Vision 'like a painting'

For two decades, Yokoyama has done groundbreaking work on the adaptive evolution of vision in vertebrates. Vision serves as a good study model, since it is the simplest of the sensory systems. For example, only four genes are involved in human vision.

"It's amazing, but you can mix together this small number of genes and detect a whole color spectrum," Yokoyama says. "It's just like a painting."

The common vertebrate ancestor possessed UV vision. However, many species, including humans, have switched from UV to violet vision, or the ability to sense the blue color spectrum.

From the ocean depths

Fish provide clues for how environmental factors can lead to such vision changes, since the available light at various ocean depths is well quantified. All fish previously studied have retained UV vision, but the Emory researchers found that the scabbardfish has not. To tease out the molecular basis for this difference, they used genetic engineering, quantum chemistry and theoretical computation to compare vision proteins and pigments from scabbardfish and another species, lampfish. The results indicated that scabbardfish shifted from UV to violet vision by deleting the molecule at site 86 in the chain of amino acids in the opsin protein.

"Normally, amino acid changes cause small structure changes, but in this case, a critical amino acid was deleted," Yokoyama says.

More examples likely

"The finding implies that we can find more examples of a similar switch to violet vision in different fish lineages," he adds. "Comparing violet and UV pigments in fish living in different habitats will open an unprecedented opportunity to clarify the molecular basis of phenotypic adaptations, along with the genetics of UV and violet vision."

Scabbardfish spend much of their life at depths of 25 to 100 meters, where UV light is less intense than violet light, which could explain why they made the vision shift, Yokoyama theorizes. Lampfish also spend much of their time in deep water. But they may have retained UV vision because they feed near the surface at twilight on tiny, translucent crustaceans that are easier to see in UV light.

A framework for evolutionary biology

Last year, Yokoyama and collaborators completed a comprehensive project to track changes in the dim-light vision protein opsin in nine fish species, chameleons, dolphins and elephants, as the animals spread into new environments and diversified over time. The researchers found that adaptive changes occur by a small number of amino acid substitutions, but most substitutions do not lead to functional changes.

Their results provided a reference framework for further research, and helped bring to light the limitations of studies that rely on statistical analysis of gene sequences alone to identify adaptive mutations in proteins.

"Evolutionary biology is filled with arguments that are misleading, at best," Yokoyama says. "To make a strong case for the mechanisms of natural selection, you have to connect changes in specific molecules with changes in phenotypes, and then you have to connect these changes to the living environment."

Journal reference:

Takashi Tada, Ahmet Altun, and Shozo Yokoyama. Evolutionary replacement of UV vision by violet vision in fish. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009; 106 (41): 17457 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903839106

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Student Struck By Hit-And-Run Driver Dies - Wbaltv.com

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 08:17 AM PDT

POSTED: 10:00 pm EDT October 16, 2009
UPDATED: 11:36 am EDT October 17, 2009

BALTIMORE -- A Johns Hopkins University student who was involved in a hit-and-run crash died Saturday at 2:30 a.m.

Police said the crash happened at the intersection of University Parkway and Saint Paul Street at about 3:20 p.m. Friday.

Investigators said 20-year-old Miriam Frankl was struck by a white Ford F-250 truck. Police said that after the truck struck Frankl, the driver drove off.

A Johns Hopkins University representative said Frankl was a junior molecular and cell biology student.

Police said the truck should have damage to the front passenger side as well as its back. They said it should also have Maryland tag number 94W412.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of this truck should call Baltimore police at 410-396-2606.

National Science Foundation awards grant to Oklahoma structural ... - Genetic Engineering News

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 03:14 PM PDT

Oct 16 2009, 5:20 PM EST

National Science Foundation awards grant to Oklahoma structural biology group

EUREKALERT

Contact: Jana Smith
jana.smith@ou.edu
405-325-1322
University of Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Structural Biology Nexus--a new statewide group of structural biologists with similar interests in this high-tech fieldwill establish a Robotics Crystallization Core Facility on the University of Oklahoma's Norman campus with the National Science Foundation award of a $360,000 grant for sophisticated robotics equipment.

The idea for the group originated within the OU Research Cabinet, which then facilitated a meeting among structural biologists from the OU Norman and Health Sciences Center campuses and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. The group met over a 14-month period to consider mutual interests and, as a result, a common theme emergedthe relatively high-tech field required sophisticated equipment and additional resources that currently were not available in the state.

The group decided Oklahoma's structural biologists needed a formal organization to work together to pursue collaborative efforts, so they began by choosing a name that best reflected the union of principal investigators from its nine participating organizations, which includes OU Norman, OU Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Cameron University, Langston University, University of Central Oklahoma, the Noble Foundation and CoMentis.

Ann West, OU professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the group's first leader, led the proposal-writing effort that resulted in the winning NSF grant for the equipment that will be housed in the new Robotics Crystallization Core Facility on the Norman campus beginning fall 2009. The equipment and facility are available to all structural biologists in the state and others who need access to sophisticated robotics equipment. Experienced OU staff will operate the equipment.

OSBN is already planning to expand the scope of its activities by applying for additional NSF equipment grants and sponsoring its first annual symposium on structural biology in the fall 2010. Information about the OSBN is available at http://chem.ou.edu/osbn or contact Ann West, OU professor of chemistry and biochemistry, at awest@ou.edu.

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Intelligent design and the new atheism: Evolution has limits - Mormon Times

Posted: 17 Oct 2009 05:54 AM PDT

PROVO, Utah -- According to Michael Behe, there are limits to what evolution can explain.

Behe spoke on Friday, Oct. 16, at BYU during the Wheatley Institution's "Symposium on Responding to the New Atheism." He quoted a statement signed by 39 Nobel award recipients that says Darwinian evolution was the "unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection."

For Behe, however, evolution via random and gradual mutations can't explain some very complex biological systems or "machines." Biology shows signs of an intelligent designer.

"You deduce design from the physical structure of a system," said Behe, a Catholic and a Lehigh University professor of biochemistry.

A simple example of deducing design, Behe said, would be the difference between looking at an ordinary mountain and looking at Mount Rushmore. One appears to be random; the other shows unmistakable signs of design. "It's not mystical. It's an everyday deduction."

"Everyone agrees that aspects of biology strongly appear to be designed," Behe said. Even one of the leading voices of the new atheism, author Richard Dawkins, wrote in "The Blind Watchmaker," that, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."

Of course, Dawkins doesn't believe biological structures were a product of intelligent design, but he admits they "overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design."

"There are structural obstacles to Darwinian evolution," Behe said. "There are physical reasons to think that it can not do what its proponents claim for it."

Behe calls those structural reasons "irreducible complexity." He said it contradicts the premise that evolution could operate slowly and gradually one mutation at a time. An irreducibly complex structure couldn't evolve that way: "You have some system and it has a number of parts and they act on each other and they are all necessary for the function to exist. You take away one or more of the parts and the function is no longer present."

By analogy, Behe offers the mousetrap. A mousetrap has various parts: a spring, a wire "hammer," a catch, a board that holds it all together. Take away any part and you have a meaningless and purposeless collection of parts. There is no way, according to Behe, that it could slowly evolve into that complexity.

Michael Behe, a Catholic and a Lehigh University professor, speaks at BYU during the Wheatley Institution's "Symposium on Responding to New Atheisim." Photo: Michael De Groote

A bacterial flagellum is a real example of just such a system. The flagellum is a whiplike propeller that a bacterium spins to move. Any part of the flagellum apparatus, without all the rest, is purposeless. "Like a mousetrap without one of its necessary parts, this one would be broken as well," Behe said.

Behe said critics have responded to his argument about irreducible complexity with "wishful thinking" that someday they will be able to explain them by random events instead of intelligent design. Behe said many continue to make "grand Darwinian claims" as if this evidence already had been discovered. "They are urban legends."

Evolution can explain many things, according to Behe. But not everything. He believes there is an edge to Darwinian evolution. At that edge is intelligent design -- the intervention of a designer.

E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com

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Closing of the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals - Market Wire

Posted: 16 Oct 2009 04:18 PM PDT

QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - Oct. 16, 2009) - The 18th Biennial conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals for the Society of Marine Mammalogy ended today in Quebec. The 1550 participants will now return home to the four corners of the globe with new ideas for research, collaborations and possible solutions from others, that can be adapted to their situations whether at a local level or a much grander scale.

The 18th biennial was remarkable in terms of new scientific advances of questions that are of interest, such as climate change, disturbance of marine mammals by noise, and other interactions with humans. Much was learned concerning health status, communications, and novel non-invasive approaches. A special outreach feature from this year's conference was the presentation by the 'Calveneers', a group of young students from Maine USA that are implicated in project CALVN which focuses on the endangered North Atlantic right whale. Through the case of the right Whale, students learn about the scientific method, genetics and populations. While in Quebec City, the 'Calvineers' also had an opportunity to visit a local school and practice their French.

The conference ended with an afternoon awards ceremony. The Frederic Fairfield Memorial Award given to a student for innovative research was given to Dominie Writt, from the University of Kansas, United States. The John G. Shedd Aquarium Award was given to Kate Charlton-Robb from Monash University in Australia, for the best student presentation at the conference. And finally, the award for Excellence in Science Communication was awarded to Tom Cranford from San Diego State University, in United States.

The special issues of Portrait de baleines (www.portraitdebaleines.net) from this week are still available for a while yet. They provide an excellent overview of the conference for those that were unable to attend.

The next meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy will be held in the late fall in Tampa Florida, United States.

For more information on the conference visit www.marinemammalscience.org, under Conference.

Communiques and special bulletins (also available on www.baleinesendirect.net/index.html) are added in the media section of the conference Website (www.marinemammalscience.org) during the event. To receive this information by email, submit your request to Karina.Laberge@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

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Biology

Saturday, October 17, 2009