At some point in the semester I tell my students that this is the best of times and the worst of times to be a biologist. It's the best of times for a number of reasons. First we just know so much more than we did when I was an undergraduate....and even five years ago. Modern techniques in biotechnology were still in the realm of science fiction or faint glimmers in the minds of our biochemistry professors. The possibility of sequencing the entire human genome and being able to make some practical use of it was just a pipe dream and not always a pleasant one either. Right now in the Unabomber case(1), investigators are hoping to match the suspect's DNA to DNA that might be present on the backs of stamps from the bomb packages. Whole new industries are emerging more rapidly than we can track and bringing with them new ethical and moral challenges.
With respect to organismal biology and evolution, we are beginning to understand how cells might have evolved. For instance we have very good evidence that at least some of the important structures within eukaryotic cells arose from free living organisms that developed a symbiotic relationship. The evidence for this is particularly good for mitochondria and plastids.
The tools of the molecular biologist have become the tools of the evolutionary biologist allowing scientists to test hypotheses about evolutionary relationships by examing differences in amino acid sequences of proteins, or examing sequences of DNA.
Our knowledge of ecology has gone beyond being merely descriptive, but to testing of sophisticated hypotheses about how plants and animals came to be distributed as they are. E.O. Wilson and others have been bravely attempting to treat the evolution of social behavior in insects and humans from a common theoretical perspective. This sociobiological approach, though ridiculed by many more psychologically oriented persons, is beginning to payoff in terms of what is now called "evolutionary psychology".
Computers too have obviously become much more important tools in biology especially as they become more powerful and compact. The machine I'm writing this on is probably faster and more powerful than the mainframe at Cornell was in the late '60's. Then the hot thing for us to do was go to the computer lab and play a space war game on a monitor. No sound, dots for a planet and two spaceships orbiting it. Most programming was via punched cards and in FORTRAN.
This speed and compactness allows you and I to use computers not just to crunch numbers or look at pretty pictures on the WWW but also to investigate models of various biological processes. The Santa Fe Institute has programs that you can down load and use to investigate what those folks cal artificial life. These are real simple programs that allegedly mimic some of the major processes that take place in evolution. Whether they do or not isn't so much the point; rather it's the fact that computers are changing how we communicate. As a supplement to a standard print publication, one can have a WWW site with downloadable programs.
This is also the worst of times and I'm afraid this is so because of our own human nature and how it interacts with technology. The same technology which has led to big improvements in public health has contributed to a rapid increase in the Earth's population. Again when I was a freshman the world's population was about 3.5 billion. Now it is 6 billion and those six billion are putting enormous pressure on the planet's biological resources; most of the planets's tropical rain forests may be gone by the year 2020. Semi- arid regions are being turned into desert because of the demand for fire wood. Inspite of ban of chlorofluorohydrocarbons(CFC's) which have been implicated in destruction of the ozone layer, the ozone layer is still being destroyed. Bootleg CFC's from countries where CFC's are still produced are appearently complicating control of CFC emissions.
Population pressure leads to people moving into new areas which exposes us to new and potentially dangerous viruses and bacteria, for example the Ebola and Hanta viruses, and hinders our ability to conserve or reintroduce species in there natural range. Here I'm thinking of the flap over wolf introduction to Yellowstone Park, or the flap about mountain lions in California. Over-population: maybe the way to think about it's effect is to imagine all the species on this planet being like stars in the sky. Imagine watching the stars wink out one by one in the night sky and the biologist as an astronomer watching and wondering if the sun will be next.
I'm wistful because we can't go back. As long as we're around we are not going to have wolves being widespread, or vast herds of buffalo...not in my life time. Inspite of the impression given by the movie "Jurassic Park", bringing extinct species back to life does not seem to be within reach. But I remain excited by the tools that we have and have hope that we can use our tools for good and re-integrate our species as a citizen of this planet.
1. Of course he was caught thanks to a courageous brother's tip.
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Paul Decelles PGD
© Paul Decelles 4/6/96 revised 9/5/99 PGD