Message from the Director
Sociogenomics
Huntington F. Willard, PhD
The subtitle in Nature said it all: "Another day,another genome."
So it must seem to biologists or to regular listeners of NPR's Science Friday. But the public in general has largely begun to lose count. After all, obscure one-paragraph stories in the nether regions of the morning paper just don't compare to breathless headlines on the front page after press conferences in the Rose Garden. And it doesn't help that the genomes being sequenced seem increasingly insignificant to all but the most ardent observers. Sure, we had the chimpanzee genome last year, but others fall short of attracting the public's wide-eyed attention. Cows? Chickens? A worm? Sand flies, a sea slug? And now, announced this month, the genome of that most social of insects, the honeybee.
"Elephants, it turns out, are more like us than we could ever have imagined: not only do they share our capacity to socialize and mourn the dead, but they are subject to the same types of post traumatic stress and explosions of violence"Unless the connection to understanding disease is obvious, some say, at least give us something cuddly (the dog, sequenced a few years ago) or cute (the dolphin, coming along soon). Or, at least something, well, big and familiar. But a honeybee?
If we really want public support for this Noah's Ark approach to genomics, then maybe what we need is a genome menagerie of zoo animals. Wouldn't what was once the ultimate in school field trips be more meaningful if one could, say, compare one's own DNA with that of every animal one sees? And once one gets beyond the obvious physical characteristics of different animals, their most fascinating features are behavioral, because they are so often like us and yet so different. Could there be a gene for picking nits? What school kid couldn't get into that?
Sociogenomics is the study of the genetic basis for social behaviors using comprehensive genome analysis. At first, this seems like an extreme concept. Sure, one's genome sequence may influence (and even, in some circumstances, determine) how one behaves as an individual. But can there really be a genomic blueprint for how we behave in social units?
Which brings us to this issue's cover story and the work of Associate Professor of Biology Susan Alberts, whose team examined genomic markers of kinship among elephants in Kenya and found that groups of elephants are not just a bunch of random animals that happen to get along, but rather tend to be highly related as extended family units. Why is that important? As Alberts tells it, it suggests that lifelong family connections, especially mother-daughter relationships, are absolutely critical to elephant social existence. Is this hard-wired into the genome of every elephant? Or is this a cultural adaptation, passed down by example, not by inheritance?
Understanding the basis for this trait makes all the more tragic the ongoing waves of poaching and culling of African elephant herds in which whole families are often wiped out and calves orphaned. As a recent article in The New York Times described in vivid terms, traumatized elephants have started to fight back; hundreds of humans have been killed by elephants in the last five years. Some elephants have raped and killed rhinos. Elephants, it turns out, are more like us than we could ever have imagined: not only do they share our capacity to socialize and mourn the dead, but they are subject to the same types of post traumatic stress and explosions of violence. Is it any wonder scientists from so many fields are interested in them? Might the genome sequence reveal such social insights? We may not have long to wait, as the elephant genome sequence should be announced soon.
Alberts, along with Greg Wray,director of the IGSP's Center for Evolutionary Genomics, is also taking a close look at the baboon genome. As she says, baboons may be more remote from us at the genomic level than chimps, but they are closer to us in terms of their ecological history.What genomic variants have allowed baboons to flourish in multiple environments over the millennia? The Alberts and Wray labs may soon give us a much better idea.
No doubt, the availability of genome sequences will be just the first of many steps for sociogenomics. Gene catalogues may allow us to compare the collections from different species, but by themselves they tell us little about variation within each species, the evolutionary events that shaped the appearance and disappearance of particular versions of genes over time, or the multitude of interactions that must exist among networks of genes and their products.
And while we wait to gain insights into the nature of elephant or baboon behaviors, did the sequence of the honeybee genome reveal its secrets of complex social behavior? In perhaps one of the clearest examples that genome sequencing is one thing and genome understanding is quite another,the answer is, well, not exactly.
That too must wait another day and, yes, another genome or two.
Huntington F. Willard
Director