Message from the Director
Evolution & the Genome
Huntington F. Willard, PhD
Somewhere on campus, there's a blue-green Toyota sporting a bumper sticker that reads, "Leave No Child Behind, TEACH EVOLUTION!" When I saw this, my first impulse was to pull alongside and give the driver a big thumbs-up or even a free IGSP t-shirt or coffee mug.
In addition to being just plain witty, it's important because we need people like this: people who understand that our entire enterprise in the genome sciences (and clinical medicine and the rest of the life sciences) rests upon what Charles Darwin postulated a century and a half ago: that the process that got us where we are today has been an ongoing cycle of mutation, adaptation and selection. It is random, messy and largely unpredictable, but the empirical evidence for it is pretty hard to deny. Ask virtually any life scientist and you'll get some version of the same answer: without evolution, there's no penicillin, no Human Genome Project, and no real hope of understanding HIV or SARS or Mad Cow or bird flu or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or cancer or heart disease. Every biomedical experiment, every tiny advance, every major breakthrough ultimately depends to some degree upon Darwinian principles. We see them played out in nature again and again, whether we're watching finches in the Galapagos or viruses mutate under the microscope. If people object to the concept of evolution on personal or religious grounds, so be it, but banning these principles from the classroom will not alter our reliance upon them. Obviously, Mr. or Ms. Blue-Green Toyota gets this.
"Every biomedical experiment, every tiny advance, every major breakthrough ultimately depends to some degree upon Darwinian principles."Someone else on campus who gets it is Greg Wray, Director of the IGSP's new Center for Evolutionary Genomics. Greg knows that to make further headway in understanding the evolution of species from the simplest microbe to the most complex primate will require state-of-the-art tools in genomics and computational biology. Under his leadership, the Center for Evolutionary Genomics will expand its reach across Duke and provide an intellectual framework and a collection of resources for applying Darwin's principles in the wet lab and at the computer cluster to tackle a wide variety of research questions on evolution.
There is hardly a gene, protein, pathway or organism that doesn't—or couldn't—benefit from consideration from an evolutionary genomic perspective. At Duke, we are already knee-deep in the comparative study of fungi, sea urchins, conifers, corn, ferns, flowers, peat mosses, insects, birds, and assorted mammals, among other species. Studies of population variation, molded by natural selection and adaptive evolution, are as critical to understanding the meaning of race or different susceptibilities to disease as they are to exploring the genomic basis for mimicry in butterflies (see article in this issue).
The TEACH EVOLUTION! bumper sticker is proof that, as eager as life scientists have been to embrace the concepts of evolution, we as a society are still at odds over those very same concepts. Battles are waged in classrooms and in the courts over whether evolution is "only a theory" to be taught side-by-side with Intelligent Design "theories" put forward by creationists. We want Duke, led by Greg's Center, to provide a strong scientific platform for carrying out new discoveries and analyses, as well as for articulating the arguments that support evolution as the unifying principle of biology.
To date, the public does not appear to be convinced. A recent Gallup poll found that only 35% of respondents believe that evolution is well supported by evidence. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to the hearts and minds of the public. Beyond the laboratory, we have to educate policy-makers, ensure the integration of evolution into science curricula, educate our children about the nature of scientific reasoning, distinguish between the process of scientific inquiry and non-scientific ideology, and recognize those teachers and mentors who docommunicate scientific ideals to their students and the public. If we value science, then it is incumbent upon us to make our case: in the schools, to friends and colleagues, and yes, to communities of faith.
The field of evolutionary genomics seeks to understand principles that guide changes in the structure and function of genomes. It will greatly inform our understanding of the genetic basis for human health and disease, as each of our own genomes is the product of a highly complex evolutionary history. We can only hope that it also informs society as we endeavor to shepherd the public at large in the Genome Revolution. To truly engage the public on this issue will demand much more from us — persuasion supported by data. And possibly a few more bumper stickers…
Huntington F. Willard
Director