Science Spotlight: Bio Speaker on Campus

Renowned Biologist and Science educator Sean Carroll came to the College last Thursday, Nov. 14, and gave two talks, one on his recently published book “Brave Genius: A Scientist’s Journey from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize” and the other on the field of evolutionary developmental biology and how different forms evolved in animal species.

Associate Professor of Biology Catherine Combelles introduced Carroll on both occasions, citing his award winning research as a Professor of Molecular Biology at Washington University, and his work in science education as the Vice-President of the Howard Hughes Medical institute. She also mentioned his well-reviewed books on popular science and his science column in the New York Times.  In his two lectures Carroll lived up to his laurels and combined his brilliant research with an ability to interestingly communicate scientific concepts.

Carroll fittingly began his talk on Jacque Monod with Rudyard Kupling’s quote “if history were taught in the form of stores, it would never be forgotten.” He then related the incredible tale of Jacque Monod, who was both one of the leaders of the French resistance against the Nazi regime and a winner of the noble prize in Physiology.

Monod was a French Jew and a graduate student in biology when the Nazis invaded France. He halted his research, which would one day win him a Nobel Prize, and joined the most militant of French resistance group. His escapades included barely escaping a deadly Gestapo raid, running arms across the Swiss border, and arming French Resistance fighters to help the allied forces during D-day. He eventually became one of the leaders of the resistance movement and helped liberate Paris from the Nazis.

Carroll linked Monod’s efforts during the French Resistance to his biological research saying “chance played a huge role in his personal life, along with his thinking about biology” and because of this “it was really Jaque Monod who drove home the role of chance in the course of life on earth in his 1980 book called chance and necessity.”

During the Q&A session Sean Carroll widened his topic to science and society. Carroll advocated for a greater role of science in culture, saying “cultural impact can happen through science – the Apollo program had a huge impact, we watched that drama unfold day by day. I think there are possibilities to find some galvanizing experiences that we can share that might gives science a little better penetration into the hearts and minds of people.”

Carroll also touched upon the conflict over evolution in America and the fact that nearly 50 percent of Americans believe in creationism. In leading the science education branch of the Howard Hughes Medical institute, which he described as the “largest private supporter of science education in the U.S”, he said that “one strategy I employ is I decided I wasn’t going to argue with anyone over 22. I think there’s no return on that investment, zero. Because I had the experience of seeing glimmers of openness and flexibility in college student and younger when exposed to certain things, such as the idea that lots and lots of large religious denominations fully embrace evolutionary science.”

In Carroll’s more science heavy lecture on Evolutionary Developmental biology he described the importance of evolutionary developmental biology to our understanding of evolution.

“Development is the process that makes form,” he said, “and therefore changes in that process must underlie the evolution of form. That’s why the field of developmental biology is so integral to understanding the evolution of form.”

He also gave a survey of the incredibly surprising finds of the recently created field which few people had predicted.

“The gene that is responsible for the development of the legs in the fruit fly embryo, is also active in the development in the legs of a butterfly, and the appendages of a shrimp, and strangely enough the wings of a chicken,” he said. “So this gene is used in the formation of all sorts of appendages in the animal kingdom. And this was very surprising because the expectation was, that for example furry animals had different gene recipes than bugs. No biologist on the planet predicted these homologs and that there would be similar genetic ingredients in the making of bodies in things as different as earthworms, and fruit flies, and mice.”

Diversity in form, Carroll explained, was not caused by the development of new genes, but rather new ways of regulating existing developmental genes. Thus, although all animals in the animal kingdom have similar genetic toolkits, they utilize them in different ways.

Carroll combined both erudition and eloquence, and entertainingly explained one of the most important concepts in biology and science.