Inferring Genomic Duplication Events

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Inferring Genomic Duplication Events University of Warsaw Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics Jarosław Paszek Student no. 209217 Inferring genomic duplication events PhD’s dissertation in COMPUTER SCIENCE Supervisor: dr hab. Paweł Górecki Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw May 2018 Supervisor’s statement Hereby I confirm that the presented thesis was prepared under my supervision and that it fulfills the requirements for the degree of PhD of Computer Science. Date Supervisor’s signature Author’s statement Hereby I declare that the presented thesis was prepared by me and none of its contents was obtained by means that are against the law. The thesis has never before been a subject of any procedure of obtaining an academic degree. Moreover, I declare that the present version of the thesis is identical to the attached electronic version. Date Author’s signature Abstract Inferring genomic duplication events One of evolutionary molecular biology fundamental problems is to discover ge- nomic duplication events and their locations in the species tree. Such events can be reconstructed by clustering single gene duplications inferred by reconciling a set of gene trees with a species tree. Existing reconciliation based approaches vary in the two fundamental aspects: (a) the choice of evolutionary scenarios that model al- lowed locations of duplications in the species tree, and (b) the rules of clustering gene duplications from gene trees into a single multiple duplication event, i.e., episode clustering (EC) or minimum episodes (ME) methods. There are several mod- els in the literature that specify how gene duplications from gene families can be interpreted as one duplication episode. However, in all duplication episode problems gene trees are rooted. This restriction limits the applicability, since unrooted gene family trees are frequently inferred by phylogenetic methods. In this dissertation, we propose a model of evolutionary scenarios that preserves the minimal number of gene duplications. We study the RME problem, that is, ME method of clustering when input gene trees are rooted. Our analysis concerns several models of allowed evolutionary scenarios with a focus on interval models in which every gene duplication has an interval consisting of allowed locations in the species tree and fulfills some additional requirements like monotonicity. We present math- ematical foundations for general genomic duplication problems. Next, we propose the first linear time and space algorithm for RME jointly for any interval model and the algorithm for the most general model in which every evolutionary scenario is allowed. We also present a comparative study of different models of genomic du- plication based on simulated and empirical datasets. We provide algorithms and tools that can be applied to solve efficiently RME problems for various models. Our comparative study helps to identify which model is the most reasonable choice in inferring genomic duplication events. This dissertation proposes the first solutions to the open problems of UEC (un- rooted episode clustering) and UME (unrooted minimum episodes) in which every reconciliation with the minimal number of single gene duplications is allowed and under the assumption that input gene trees are unrooted. In particular, we show new theoretical properties of unrooted reconciliation for the duplication cost and apply them to design several exact and heuristic algorithms for solving the genomic duplication problems. Our comparative study shows that we can improve known results on genomic duplication inference from rooted trees. Moreover, our evaluation on empirical datasets confirms several genomic duplication events from the litera- ture and demonstrates that the proposed algorithms can be successfully applied in practice. Streszczenie Studium zdarzeń duplikacji w genomie Jednym z fundamentalnych zagadnień w molekularnej biologii obliczeniowej jest wykrywanie zdarzeń duplikacji w genomie oraz określenie ich położenia w drzewie gatunków. Rekonstrukcja tych zdarzeń jest możliwa poprzez klastrowanie poje- dynczych duplikacji genu, wyznaczonych przez uzgadnianie zbioru drzew genów ze zbiorem gatunków. Istniejące metody różnią się w dwóch zasadniczych kwestiach: (a) wyboru scenariuszy ewolucyjnych, które modelują dopuszczalne lokalizacje dup- likacji w drzewie gatunków oraz (b) określenia zasad klastrowania duplikacji genów z drzew genów w jedno zdarzenie wielokrotnej duplikacji, metod jak np. episode clustering (EC) lub minimum episodes (ME). Analizując literaturę można wyróżnić kilka modeli opisujących jak duplikacje genów z drzew rodzin genów in- terpretować jako jedno zdarzenie, jednak wszystkie one dotyczą przypadku, gdy drzewa genów są ukorzenione. Warunek ten ogranicza możliwości zastosowań, gdyż to nieukorzenione drzewa genów są wynikiem popularnych metod filogenetycznych. W niniejszej rozprawie, proponujemy model scenariuszy ewolucyjnych, który za- chowuje minimalną liczbę duplikacji genów. Badamy problem RME, czyli klastrowa- nia metodą ME w przypadku, gdy wejściowe drzewa genów są ukorzenione. Przeana- lizowaliśmy kilka modeli dopuszczalnych scenariuszy ewolucyjnych, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem modeli interwałowych, w których każda duplikacja genu ma przy- pisany interwał dopuszczalnych lokalizacji w drzewie gatunków, oraz nakładają- cych dodatkowe ograniczenia jak monotoniczność. Przedstawiamy matematyczne podstawy dla ogólnych problemów duplikacji genomowych. Następnie, dla prob- lemu RME proponujemy pierwszy liniowy algorytm uniwersalny dla modeli inter- wałowych oraz algorytm dla najbardziej ogólnego modelu, w którym każdy scenariusz ewolucyjny jest dopuszczalny. Dodatkowo przedstawiamy studium porównawcze dla różnych modeli duplikacji genomowych, które bazuje na danych symulowanych i empirycznych. Dostarczamy algorytmów i narzędzi do efektywnego rozwiązywa- nia problemów RME dla różnych modeli. Nasze studium porównawcze pozwala na zidentyfikowanie, który model stanowi najrozsądniejszy wybór przy wnioskowaniu zdarzeń duplikacji genomu. Niniejsza rozprawa przedstawia pierwsze rozwiązania dla otwartych problemów UEC (episode clustering) i UME (minimum episodes), w których każdy scenariusz implikujący minimalną liczbę pojedynczych duplikacji genu jest dopuszczalny oraz przyjmujemy założenie, że wejściowe drzewa genów są nieukorzenione. W szczegól- ności prezentujemy nowe teoretyczne własności nieukorzenionego uzgadniania dla kosztu duplikacyjnego i wykorzystujemy je do zaprojektowania dokładnych i heurysty- cznych algorytmów rozwiązujących problemy duplikacji genomowych. Nasza ewalu- acja eksperymentalna pokazuje, że potrafimy ulepszyć znane wyniki dla wnioskowa- nia duplikacji genomowych z ukorzenionych drzew. Dodatkowo nasza analiza na empirycznych danych potwierdziła kilka zdarzeń duplikacji genomowych z literatury demonstrując, że proponowane algorytmy można z sukcesem wykorzystywać w prak- tyce. Keywords genomic duplication, duplication episode, reconciliation, minimum episodes problem, episode clustering problem, unrooted gene tree, gene tree, species tree Thesis domain (Socrates-Erasmus subject area codes) 11.3 Informatyka Subject classification Applied computing ! Life and medical sciences ! ! Genomics ! Bioinformatics ! Computational biology ! Computational genomics Mathematics of computing ! Discrete mathematics ! ! Graph theory ! Trees ! Graph theory ! Graph algorithms Tytuł pracy w języku polskim Studium zdarzeń duplikacji w genomie List of publications of major results from the thesis: Paszek, J. and Górecki, P. (2016). Genomic duplication problems for unrooted gene trees. BMC Genomics, 17(1):165–175. doi: 10.1186/s12864-015-2308-4. Paszek, J. and Górecki, P. (2017a). Efficient algorithms for genomic duplica- tion models. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioin- formatics. doi: 10.1109/TCBB.2017.2706679. Paszek, J. and Górecki, P. (2017b). New algorithms for the genomic dupli- cation problem. In: Meidanis J., Nakhleh L. (eds) Comparative Genomics. RECOMB-CG 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10562:101–115. Springer, Cham. Paszek, J. and Górecki, P. (2018). Inferring duplication episodes from unrooted gene trees. BMC Genomics, 19(5):288. doi: 10.1186/s12864-018-4623-z. List of selected publications in phylogenetics: Górecki, P., Paszek, J., and Eulenstein, O. (2017). Unconstrained Diameters for Deep Coalescence. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioin- formatics, 14(5):1002–1012. doi: 10.1109/TCBB.2016.2520937. Górecki, P., Markin, A., Mykowiecka, A., Paszek, J., and Eulenstein, O. (2017). Phy- logenetic tree reconciliation: Mean values for fixed gene trees. LNCS, 10330:234–245. Górecki, P., Paszek, J., and Mykowiecka, A. (2016). Mean values of gene dupli- cation and loss cost functions. LNCS, 9683:189–199. Górecki, P., Paszek, J., and Eulenstein, O. (2014). Duplication Cost Diameters. LNCS, 8492:212–223. Górecki, P., Paszek, J., and Eulenstein, O. (2014). Unconstrained gene tree di- ameters for deep coalescence. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Bioin- formatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics, BCB ’14, pages 114–121. (ACM SIGBio best paper award in 2014) Selected other publications: Gambin, T., Startek, M., Walczak, K., Paszek, J., Grzebelus, D., and Gambin, A. (2013). Tirfinder: A web tool for mining class ii transposons carrying terminal in- verted repeats. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 9:17–27. Huczko, A., Lange, H., Paszek, J., Bystrzejewski, M., Cudziło, S., Gachet, S., Mon- thioux, M., Zhu, Y. Q., Kroto, H. W., and Walton,
Recommended publications
  • The Gigas Effect: a Reliable Predictor of Ploidy? Case Studies in Oxalis
    The gigas effect: A reliable predictor of ploidy? Case studies in Oxalis by Frederik Willem Becker Thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Faculty of Science at Stellenbosch University Supervisors: Prof. Léanne L.Dreyer, Dr. Kenneth C. Oberlander, Dr. Pavel Trávníček March 2021 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. March 2021 …………………………. ………………… F.W. Becker Date Copyright © 2021 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved i Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract Whole Genome Duplication (WGD), or polyploidy is an important evolutionary process, but literature is divided over its long-term evolutionary potential to generate diversity and lead to lineage divergence. WGD often causes major phenotypic changes in polyploids, of which the most prominent is the Gigas effect. The Gigas effect refers to the enlargement of plant cells due to their increased amount of DNA, causing plant organs to enlarge as well. This enlargement has been associated with fitness advantages in polyploids, enabling them to successfully establish and persist, eventually causing speciation. Using Oxalis as a study system, I examine whether Oxalis polyploids exhibit the Gigas effect using 24 species across the genus from the Oxalis living research collection at the Stellenbosch University Botanical Gardens, Stellenbosch.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Hardin, Ph.D. John W
    Department of Biology The College of Arts + Sciences | Indiana University Bloomington About Paul Hardin Distinguished Alumni Award Lecture Thu., Oct. 18, 2018 • 4 to 5 pm • Myers Hall 130 Paul Hardin, Ph.D. John W. Lyons Jr. ’59 Chair in Biology, Texas A&M University Genetic architecture underlying circadian clock initiation, maintenance, and output in Drosophila Circadian clocks drive daily rhythms in metabolism, physiology, and behavior in organisms ranging from cyanobacteria to humans. The identification and analysis of “clock genes” in Drosophila revealed that circadian timekeeping is based on a transcriptional feedback loop Paul Hardin studied the development of the sea in which CLOCK-CYCLE (CLK-CYC) heterodimers activate transcription of their feedback urchin embryo in William Klein’s lab at Indiana repressors PERIOD (PER) and TIMELESS (TIM). Subsequent studies revealed that similar University, from where he received his Ph.D. in transcriptional feedback loops keep circadian time in all eukaryotes and, in the case of 1987. He did his postdoctoral fellowship with animals, that these feedback loops are comprised of conserved components. The “core” Michael Rosbash at Brandeis University, working feedback loop described above operates in conjunction with an “interlocked” feedback on the circadian rhythms of the fruit fly, Drosophila loop in animals to drive rhythmic transcription of hundreds of genes that are maximally melanogaster. His work with Michael Rosbash and expressed at different phases of the circadian cycle. These feedback loops operate in many, Jeff Hall has been instrumental to our understanding but not all, tissues in flies including the brain pacemaker neurons that control rest:activity of how circadian rhythms affect a myriad of rhythms.
    [Show full text]
  • RNA Society Newsletter August 2013
    RNA Society Newsletter August 2013 From the Desk of the President, Rachel Green Whether we are taking classes, teaching classes, or just living our lives under the umbrella of the academic cycle, summer marks the time for sharing what we have learned during those long dark winter months. For the RNA Society, this summer was no exception where many of us attended the 18th annual RNA Society meeting in the heart of the Alps in Davos, Switzerland to share our new data and ideas. (Continued on p2) In this issue : From the Desk of the President, Rachel Green 1 RNA 2013 Meeting Review: Davos, Switzerland Election Results Announced 4 Junior Scientist Meetings Summary 4 RNA Lifetime Achievement Award 6 Volunteer Positions Available 7 Junior Scientist Corner 8 Chair of the Meetings Committee, David Lilley 9 From the desk of our CEO, James McSwiggen 11 Thank you volunteers 13 RNA Society supported meetings Meetings Reports 16 Upcoming meetings of interest 18 Employment Opportunities 21 1 The meeting organizers this year included the opening evening of the meeting a full session of two Swiss natives, Frederic Allain and Witold science was planned, headed off by Venki Filipowicz, as well as Adrian Krainer (RNA Ramakrishnan who gave a beautiful talk bringing Society president elect!), Osamu Nureki and Sarah together biochemical Woodson. In addition to their excellent guidance, the and structural organizers were helped at the organizational level by perspectives on the Simple Meetings (including Kristin Scheyer and process of decoding Mary McCann) who over the years have really during protein figured out our needs.
    [Show full text]
  • Genetic Effects on Microsatellite Diversity in Wild Emmer Wheat (Triticum Dicoccoides) at the Yehudiyya Microsite, Israel
    Heredity (2003) 90, 150–156 & 2003 Nature Publishing Group All rights reserved 0018-067X/03 $25.00 www.nature.com/hdy Genetic effects on microsatellite diversity in wild emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccoides) at the Yehudiyya microsite, Israel Y-C Li1,3, T Fahima1,MSRo¨der2, VM Kirzhner1, A Beiles1, AB Korol1 and E Nevo1 1Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel; 2Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Corrensstrasse 3, 06466 Gatersleben, Germany This study investigated allele size constraints and clustering, diversity. Genome B appeared to have a larger average and genetic effects on microsatellite (simple sequence repeat number (ARN), but lower variance in repeat number 2 repeat, SSR) diversity at 28 loci comprising seven types of (sARN), and smaller number of alleles per locus than genome tandem repeated dinucleotide motifs in a natural population A. SSRs with compound motifs showed larger ARN than of wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides, from a shade vs those with perfect motifs. The effects of replication slippage sun microsite in Yehudiyya, northeast of the Sea of Galilee, and recombinational effects (eg, unequal crossing over) on Israel. It was found that allele distribution at SSR loci is SSR diversity varied with SSR motifs. Ecological stresses clustered and constrained with lower or higher boundary. (sun vs shade) may affect mutational mechanisms, influen- This may imply that SSR have functional significance and cing the level of SSR diversity by both processes. natural constraints.
    [Show full text]
  • Table of Contents (PDF)
    June 28, 2016 u vol. 113 u no. 26 From the Cover 7106 Topological defects in liquid crystals E3619 Translation control in Fragile X syndrome E3686 Voltage-sensing phosphatase activities E3782 Aerobic glycolysis and learning 7261 Electric field sensing by bumblebees Contents THIS WEEK IN PNAS Cover image: Pictured is a polarized 7003 In This Issue optical micrograph of a plastic sheet with an array of holes drilled into it and suspended in a nematic-phase liquid LETTERS (ONLINE ONLY) crystal. Lisa Tran et al. found that such a sheet induced arrays of topological E3590 Reduced nitrogen dominated nitrogen deposition in the United States, but its defect lines in a nematic liquid crystal. contribution to nitrogen deposition in China decreased The authors further demonstrated how Xuejun Liu, Wen Xu, Enzai Du, Yuepeng Pan, and Keith Goulding the energy of the liquid crystal and the E3592 Reply to Liu et al.: On the importance of US deposition of nitrogen dioxide, geometry of the holes affect the defect coarse particle nitrate, and organic nitrogen patterns. The findings might have Yi Li, Bret A. Schichtel, John T. Walker, Donna B. Schwede, Xi Chen, Christopher M. B. applications in electronic displays, Lehmann, Melissa A. Puchalski, David A. Gay, and Jeffrey L. Collett Jr. where nematic liquid crystals are widely used. See the article by Tran et al. on E3594 Rise and fall of nitrogen deposition in the United States pages 7106–7111. Image courtesy of Enzai Du Lisa Tran. E3596 Adult pelvic shape change is an evolutionary side effect Philipp Mitteroecker and Barbara Fischer E3597 Reply to Mitteroecker and Fischer: Developmental solutions to the obstetrical dilemma are not Gouldian spandrels Marcia S.
    [Show full text]
  • Biology Dictionary English - Khmer
    vcnanuRkm CIvviTüa Gg;eKøs-Exµr Biology Dictionary English - Khmer saklviTüal½yPUminÞPñMeBj ed)a:tWm:g; CIvviTüa e)aHBum<elIkTI 3 ¬EksMrYl¦ 2003 Preface to the Third Edition (Revised) This dictionary is the work of many teachers and some students in the Biology department of The Royal University of Phnom Penh. It has developed over the last three years in response to the need of Biology students to learn Biology from English text books. We have also tried to anticipate the future needs of Biology students and teachers in Cambodia. If they want to join the global scientific community; read scientific journals, listen to international media, attend international conferences or study outside Cambodia, then they will probably need to communicate in English. Therefore, the main aim of this book is to help Cambodian students and teachers at the university level to understand Biology in English. All languages evolve. In the past the main influence on Khmer language was French. Nowadays, it is increasingly English. Some technical terms have already been absorbed from French and have become Khmer. Nowadays new technical terms are usually created in English and are used around the world. Language is also created by those who use it and only exists when it is used. Therefore, common usage has also influenced our translation. We have tried to respond to these various influences when preparing this dictionary, so that it represents many different opinions - old and new, Francophile, Anglophile and Khmer. But there will always be some disagreement about the translation of some terms. This is normal and occurs in all languages.
    [Show full text]
  • PRESS RELEASE National Academies and the Law Collaborate
    The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470 PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release: 11 April 2016 National academies and the law collaborate to provide better understanding of science to the courts The Lord Chief Justice, The Royal Society and Royal Society of Edinburgh today (11 April 2016) announce the launch of a project to develop a series of guides or ‘primers’ on scientific topics which is designed to assist the judiciary, legal teams and juries when handling scientific evidence in the courtroom. The first primer document to be developed will cover DNA analysis. The purpose of the primer documents is to present, in plain English, an easily understood and accurate position on the scientific topic in question. The primers will also cover the limitations of the science, challenges associated with its application and an explanation of how the scientific area is used within the judicial system. An editorial board, drawn from the judicial and scientific communities, will develop each individual primer. Before publication, the primers will be peer reviewed by practitioners, including forensic scientists and the judiciary, as well as the public. Lord Thomas, Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales says, “The launch of this project is the realisation of an idea the judiciary has been seeking to achieve. The involvement of the Royal Society and Royal Society of Edinburgh will ensure scientific rigour and I look forward to watching primers develop under the stewardship of leading experts in the fields of law and science.” Dr Julie Maxton, Executive Director of the Royal Society, says, “This project had its beginnings in our 2011 Brain Waves report on Neuroscience and the Law, which highlighted the lack of a forum in the UK for scientists, lawyers and judges to explore areas of mutual interest.
    [Show full text]
  • Jeffreys Alec
    Alec Jeffreys Personal Details Name Alec Jeffreys Dates 09/01/1950 Place of Birth UK (Oxford) Main work places Leicester Principal field of work Human Molecular Genetics Short biography To follow Interview Recorded interview made Yes Interviewer Peter Harper Date of Interview 16/02/2010 Edited transcript available See below Personal Scientific Records Significant Record sets exists Records catalogued Permanent place of archive Summary of archive Interview with Professor Alec Jeffreys, Tuesday 16 th February, 2010 PSH. It’s Tuesday 16 th February, 2010 and I am talking with Professor Alec Jeffreys at the Genetics Department in Leicester. Alec, can I start at the beginning and ask when you were born and where? AJ. I was born on the 9 th January 1950, in Oxford, in the Radcliffe Infirmary and spent the first six years of my life in a council house in Headington estate in Oxford. PSH. Were you schooled in Oxford then? AJ. Up until infant’s school and then my father, who worked at the time in the car industry, he got a job at Vauxhall’s in Luton so then we moved off to Luton. So that was my true formative years, from 6 to 18, spent in Luton. PSH. Can I ask in terms of your family and your parents in particular, was there anything in the way of a scientific background, had either of them or any other people in the family been to university before. Or were you the first? AJ. I was the first to University, so we had no tradition whatsoever of going to University.
    [Show full text]
  • Science in Court
    www.nature.com/nature Vol 464 | Issue no. 7287 | 18 March 2010 Science in court Academics are too often at loggerheads with forensic scientists. A new framework for certification, accreditation and research could help to heal the breach. o the millions of people who watch television dramas such as face more legal challenges to their results as the academic critiques CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, forensic science is an unerring mount. And judges will increasingly find themselves refereeing Tguide to ferreting out the guilty and exonerating the inno- arguments over arcane new technologies and trying to rule on the cent. It is a robust, high-tech methodology that has all the preci- admissibility of the evidence they produce — a struggle that can sion, rigour and, yes, glamour of science at its best. lead to a body of inconsistent and sometimes ill-advised case law, The reality is rather different. Forensics has developed largely which muddies the picture further. in isolation from academic science, and has been shaped more A welcome approach to mend- by the practical needs of the criminal-justice system than by the ing this rift between communities is “National leadership canons of peer-reviewed research. This difference in perspective offered in a report last year from the is particularly has sometimes led to misunderstanding and even rancour. For US National Academy of Sciences important example, many academics look at techniques such as fingerprint (see go.nature.com/WkDBmY). Its given the highly analysis or hair- and fibre-matching and see a disturbing degree central recommendation is that the interdisciplinary of methodological sloppiness.
    [Show full text]
  • Uniting Micro- with Macroevolution Into an Extended Synthesis: Reintegrating Life’S Natural History Into Evolution Studies
    Uniting Micro- with Macroevolution into an Extended Synthesis: Reintegrating Life’s Natural History into Evolution Studies Nathalie Gontier Abstract The Modern Synthesis explains the evolution of life at a mesolevel by identifying phenotype–environmental interactions as the locus of evolution and by identifying natural selection as the means by which evolution occurs. Both micro- and macroevolutionary schools of thought are post-synthetic attempts to evolution- ize phenomena above and below organisms that have traditionally been conceived as non-living. Microevolutionary thought associates with the study of how genetic selection explains higher-order phenomena such as speciation and extinction, while macroevolutionary research fields understand species and higher taxa as biological individuals and they attribute evolutionary causation to biotic and abiotic factors that transcend genetic selection. The microreductionist and macroholistic research schools are characterized as two distinct epistemic cultures where the former favor mechanical explanations, while the latter favor historical explanations of the evolu- tionary process by identifying recurring patterns and trends in the evolution of life. I demonstrate that both cultures endorse radically different notions on time and explain how both perspectives can be unified by endorsing epistemic pluralism. Keywords Microevolution · Macroevolution · Origin of life · Evolutionary biology · Sociocultural evolution · Natural history · Organicism · Biorealities · Units, levels and mechanisms of evolution · Major transitions · Hierarchy theory But how … shall we describe a process which nobody has seen performed, and of which no written history gives any account? This is only to be investigated, first, in examining the nature of those solid bodies, the history of which we want to know; and 2dly, in exam- ining the natural operations of the globe, in order to see if there now actually exist such operations, as, from the nature of the solid bodies, appear to have been necessary to their formation.
    [Show full text]
  • Metal-Organic Frameworks: the New All-Rounders in Chemistry Research
    Issue 2 | January 2019 | Half-Yearly | Bangalore RNI No. KARENG/2018/76650 Rediscovering School Science Page 8 Metal-organic frameworks: The new all-rounders in chemistry research A publication from Azim Premji University i wonder No. 134, Doddakannelli Next to Wipro Corporate Office Sarjapur Road, Bangalore — 560 035. India Tel: +91 80 6614 9000/01/02 Fax: +91 806614 4903 www.azimpremjifoundation.org Also visit the Azim Premji University website at www.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in A soft copy of this issue can be downloaded from http://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/resources-iwonder.aspx i wonder is a science magazine for school teachers. Our aim is to feature writings that engage teachers (as well as parents, researchers and other interested adults) in a gentle, and hopefully reflective, dialogue about the many dimensions of teaching and learning of science in class and outside it. We welcome articles that share critical perspectives on science and science education, provide a broader and deeper understanding of foundational concepts (the hows, whys and what nexts), and engage with examples of practice that encourage the learning of science in more experiential and meaningful ways. i wonder is also a great read for students and science enthusiasts. Editors Ramgopal (RamG) Vallath Chitra Ravi Editorial Committee REDISCOVERING SCHOOL SCIENCE Anand Narayanan Hridaykant Dewan Jayalekshmy Ayyer Navodita Jain Editorial Radha Gopalan As a child growing up in rural Kerala, my chief entertainment was reading: mostly Rajaram Nityananda science, history of science and, also, biographies of scientists. To me, science Richard Fernandes seemed pure and uncluttered by politicking. I thought of scientists as completely Sushil Joshi rational beings, driven only by a desire to uncover the mysteries of the universe.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermann J. Muller's 1936 Letter to Stalin
    The Mankind Quarterly 43 (3), Spring 2003, pp. 305-319 Hermann J. Muller’s 1936 Letter to Stalin John Glad1 University of Maryland This is the full text of a 1936 letter sent by the American geneticist H.J. Muller to Joseph Stalin advocating the creation of a eugenic program in the USSR. It was rejected by Stalin in favor of Lysenkoism. Key words: eugenics, communism, Lysenkoist theory, liberal roots of eugenics movement, Jewish scholars, Hermann J. Muller, Joseph Stalin, Stalinist, purges. Hermann Joseph Muller (1890-1967) received the Nobel Prize in 1946 for his work on the genetics of drosophila, whose brief generational life made it an ideal laboratory in miniature. Within a decade, however, following the discovery in 1953 of the double helical structure of DNA, drosophila studies began to be regarded as classical genetics and gave way to microbial and molecular genetics devoted to gene structure and function. Muller looked upon his drosophila research as science to be applied to the genetic betterment of the human species. A popular misconception with regard to eugenics is that it was exclusively a product of political conservatism. In point of fact the movement had its roots in the left as much as in the right. Muller himself was a devoted communist and an idealistic believer in human rights. Bearing in mind that Jewish scholars played a significant role in the eugenics movement, it should not come as a surprise to find that Muller was Jewish on his mother’s side. Indeed, he wrote a letter to Stalin on the subject of eugenics at the suggestion of the Russian-Jewish physician Solomon Levit, whose main interests lay in the field of genetics, especially in twin studies.
    [Show full text]