Ever since our environment became our "ecology," the pertinent language has
"evolved": jungles have become "rain forests"; swamps, "wetlands." And why
not?
Who would want to propose tax money to preserve a swamp?
Therefore, teaching "applied evolution," must seem a lot more sexy, no pun
intended, than calling it husbandry, or genetics, or immunology, or
bacteriology, etc, etc. I mean, with the wrong terminology, most of this
stuff would be some state Ag School or school of forestry, rather than in a
top-rated university research center. And that, of course, could lead to
serious "misallocation" of important research grants.
But I would like to bring up some points...
1. In the quote..."These examples
present opportunities for education of the public and for
nontraditional career paths in evolutionary biology..." what is the
alternative to "evolutionary biology?" "Creationist biology?" Do the
Fundies really have a gripe against the basic tenets of immunology? Of
hybridization? Of computer viruses? (That last one was a stretch, but it
was inferred in the authors' previous sentence.)
2. The authors (I assume) chose "artificial selection" as the first group of
key words to this proposal. If find this ironic, since the remainder of the
paper would indicate that there isn't any such process. 8^)
All in all, as good as expected.
Norm Woodward
Robins AFB GA
-----Original Message-----
From: Marcio Pie [mailto:pie@bu.edu]
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2001 8:49 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Applied evolution
Hi all,
This paper just came out in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics.
This might answer Moorad's question a couple of weeks ago on practical
applications of evolutionary theory.
Marcio
---------------------------------------
Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 2001. 32:183-217.
APPLIED EVOLUTION
J. J. Bull1 and H. A. Wichman2
1Section of Integrative Biology, Institute of Cellular and Molecular
Biology, University of Texas,
Austin, Texas 78712-1023; e-mail: bull@bull.biosci.utexas.edu
2Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho
83844-3051; e-mail:
hwichman@uidaho.edu
KEY WORDS: artificial selection, directed evolution, phylogenetics,
resistance, evolutionary computation
Evolutionary biology is widely perceived as a discipline with relevance
that lies purely in academia. Until recently, that perception was largely
true, except for the often neglected role of evolutionary biology in the
improvement of agricultural crops and animals. In the past two decades,
however, evolutionary biology has assumed a broad relevance extending far
outside its original bounds. Phylogenetics, the study of Darwin's theory of
"descent with modification," is now the foundation of disease tracking and
of the identification of species in medical, pharmacological, or
conservation settings. It further underlies bioinformatics approaches to
the analysis of genomes. Darwin's "evolution by natural selection" is being
used in many contexts, from the design of biotechnology protocols to create
new drugs and industrial enzymes, to the avoidance of resistant pests and
microbes, to the development of new computer technologies. These examples
present opportunities for education of the public and for
nontraditional career paths in evolutionary biology. They also provide new
research material for people trained in classical approaches.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcio R. Pie
Department of Biology
Boston University
5 Cummington St.
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: (617) 353-6974
FAX: (617) 353-6340
http://people.bu.edu/pie/
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