Darwin vs Lamarck

So, reading this book about the process of insight, an important issue, for scientist, I found plenty of trick to favor the development of it. But this led me to wonder, how do you recognize the right insight?

Consider Darwin and Lamarck. Sure Lamarck also had his 'Eureka' moment. But it was a wrong Eureka. However, because it made so much sense, he just followed and pushed his idea for most of his life, and is now recognized as an important contributor to evolutionary theory albeit a wrong one. So, how do you recognize good intuition from wrong intuition? In the case of Darwin vs Lamarck, it must be very difficult, even impossible for Lamarck at the time to recognize, even less admit, that he was wrong, partly because the idea was so good, it made so much sense. It is easy for us now a posteriori to say that Lamarck was wrong but at the time, with the knowledge and tools they had, it sure sounded like a good idea, and he had many followers.

I guess a few clues could have come from evaluating and pushing his theory to the limit. By example, Lamarck did not explain the origin of new species. An all important point in evolution. Or may be I should say didn't explain it as convincingly as Darwin's. I guess that a more critical evaluation of his own theory might have helped Lamarck to realize his mistake, eg there is no 'improvement' of the race in animal breeding, so well explained by Darwin, it is selection, not adaptation.

Can 'Eureka' be learned?

Was just reading a Science book review entitled 'Facilitating "A-ha!" moments'. The book is about how to expand creativity, apparently loaded with anecdotes and 'tricks' to facilitate it. Interesting example includes the fact that building planners locate bathrooms in places that force people that are not used to meet to come together to the same place. Apparently, this has been shown to increase a company's creativity. I have been told that this kind of planning to force people to meet is increasingly taken into account into scientific buildings eg at the Janelia Farm campus, VA. More importantly, there is apparently a call to change our education system in order to promote creativity in children. The book is apparently great fun. It is still not clear if reading it would improve your creativity, but it can certainly not hurt. I was not convince if I should buy it or not, but the call to change education to promote creativity got me. I will buy it and tell you more about it soon.


Got it, very nice book. Had trouble to put it down. Lots of interesting stuff, some you know, some you guessed and some you never thought about. By example there is an important distinction between insights and sustained focused attention during long period of intensive work. Coffee and other drugs might help with the later, but not with the former.

Ciliary pore complex

The protocoatomer hypothesis suggest a common evolutionary origin for key eukaryotic complexes like nuclear pores complexes (NPC) and coated vesicles based on a typical domain architecture, the membrane coat (MC) architecture, found only in some of the proteins forming those complexes. Adding to a growing list of data, Kee et al. (2012) Nat. Cell Biol. 14, 431–7, see also the preview by Obado and Rout (2012) Developmental Cell 22, 693-4, suggest that this connection should be increased to include cilia, another key eukaryotic feature. The presence of karyopherins and of a Ran gradient in both systems (Dishinger et al., 2010) already provided some links between the NPC and the cilia. At least one karyopherin recognize a CLS (ciliary localization sequence) that is suspiciously similar to a NLS (nuclear localization sequence). In addition, MC proteins are also found inside the cilia in the transport complexes (Taschner et al., 2012) and components of the BBSome (a multi-protein complex involved in cilia transport) share related structural organization with the coat complexes (Jin et al., 2010). Because this protein architecture is also found in clathrin, COPI and COPII complexes, this suggests a common evolutionary origin to NPCs, coated vesicles and some ciliary components in, to cite the original protocoatomer hypothesis,

an early membrane-curving module that led to the formation of the internal membrane systems in modern eukaryotes,

which can now possibly be expanded to include the cilia or its ancestor.

The origin of the eukaryotic cell is becoming a more complex but also more fascinating issue.

Topics sections in PLoS Computational Biology

New topic sections has appeared in PLoS Comp. Bio., 8(3): e1002446 in an attempt to promote contribution and recognition of it in Wikipedia. There is no way to deny the ever increasing role of Wikipedia in basic research. This is an attempt to induce biologist (computational ones) to contribute to it. I am even more excited because the first highlighted example, on circular permutations in proteins is by a friend of mine. Excellent article.
Interesting initiative, let see how it develops and may be contribute. As the paper suggests in ending:

Who knows what you might be contributing to?

Time for a new genetics curriculum

Biology is changing fast. In an excellent article in Plos Biology, 10(7): e1001356, Redfield RJ, consider that the way we use to teach genetics is updated and propose alternative to teach useful and interesting material. Although we might not agree on everything she propose, it is to be admitted that the historical perspective in genetic teaching is outdated and in need of a shaking.

However, I personally believe that the historical aspect is part of the beauty and attraction of biology. I remember very well that learning about the elegance and beauty of the classical experiments by eg Jacob and Monod, amongst many others was part of the fascination to become a biologist. By example, I recently very much enjoyed an historical perspective on the first tree of life by Woese written by Pace et al., PNAS 2012. I believe that the combination of historical context and realization of the implications that it had and still has, is fascinating.

It is true that with the pace of change in current biology, it should probably be forming a separate less central aspect of a modern curriculum. I would however favor to keep the historical perspective because of the intrinsic beauty of the experiments and the lessons it teaches about scientific thinking.

The before last sentence is highly stimulating:

As long as we remain comfortable with teaching largely irrelevant material, we don't have to worry about changing it.

It has now to be seen how this develop in a new course and how this modifies the potential interest of the student.

COS symposium

Latest poster for the COS symposium can be found below.

NCBS meeting wrap-up publications

An excellent summary of the NCBS meeting has just been published by the organizers in Nature Cell Biology 14, 651 (2012). And another one by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
We are preparing something on those lines for the NSF EvolCellBio meeting. Coming soon. In addition, the slides of some of the talks are available here. I recommend particularly recommend to look at the one of W. Martin.