Much about James Franklin Crow, who died on 4 January two weeks short of
his 96th birthday, challenges our sense of scale. Over seven decades,
he contributed to an astonishing array of topics in genetics, and the
list of his students and postdocs reads like a who's who. One of them,
the pioneering geneticist Motoo Kimura, wrote that getting Crow as his
adviser after a period of uncertainty was such a joy it was like
"meeting Buddha in Hell". Crow also played the viola for 45 years with
the Madison Symphony Orchestra. He once performed with the great violin
soloist Yehudi Menuhin.
That's the opening paragraph of Alexey Kondrashov's wonderful piece remembering the life and work of James F. Crow. Please visit Nature and read the whole thing. Jim was a remarkable individual.
Visualizing is a vital part of scientific discovery. Drew Berry starts with Galileo and Darwin before moving on to his work showing the dynamics of the molecular machinery in our own cells. Watch, be amazed, and understand something about DNA replication.
Carl Zimmer gets it just right (not surprisingly):
Berry's TEDx talk is more satisfying because it's a talk.
You look at the mesmerizing images, and Berry explains what you're
seeing. What's really interesting is how he-no doubt unconsciously-uses
words that switch on the mental eye. When he zooms in on a chromosome,
he points out structures passing through it that look "like whiskers,"
which act as the "scaffolding" for the cell (the microtubules). He then
zooms into the place where the chromosome and microtubule meet, the
kinetochore. What you see looks like a supercomputer's acid trip. But
you can make sense of what you see because Berry uses metaphors. He
calls it a "signal broadcasting system." Now all the molecules jittering
around aren't totally random. We can see how molecules come together to
make life possible.
There's no question that people like Berry are going to be making the
movies that fill our heads in our future when we think about what's
going on in our bodies. But those movies will need good soundtracks.
I was greatly saddened when I learned yesterday that James F. Crow died earlier this week. Jim was a link to everyone who had a hand in the development of genetics, from Mueller, Sturtevant, Fisher, Wright, and Haldane to Kimura and too many others to mention. I can't claim to know him well. Our paths crossed only a few times, but he was extraordinarily generous and kind. I was especially flattered that he came to a talk I gave last April when I visited the University of Wisconsin. He asked a difficult, incisive question and in his gentle way encouraged me to think more carefully about my results.
The January issue of Genetics began a series of articles, "Honoring Our Colleague James F. Crow, an Outstanding Gentleman, Citizen, and Scientist".
Why honor Jim? The answer is obvious to the many who have the privilege to know him: a gentleman and scholar of the highest order, he represents the best of our field. (source)
John Hawks sums up the feelings of those who knew him the best, his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin.
Several years ago, colleagues from several departments here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison succeeded in a long-time ambition of Jim's to found an Institute for the Study of Evolution. He had envisioned that the institute should be named for Sewall Wright, who had been important to Jim himself and forms a major part of the legacy of genetics and evolution. But the future institute's members insisted instead to name the new entity in honor of Jim. It is a fitting legacy for a great evolutionary geneticist.
Jim was a treasure, and he will be greatly missed.
Regular readers will remember that I spent most of July and August in South Africa measuring plants and collecting specimens as part of a large, NSF-funded Dimensions of Biodiversity project. The project focuses on the plant genera Protea and Pelargonium, and we seek both to understand functional trait variation within these and to relate it to the community context in which the plants are embedded.
We are now seeking new post-doctoral research associate to join us on the project. The person we hire will be required to spend a long period of time in South Africa starting in June or July 2012 and will be responsible for design, implementation, and analysis of field and greenhouse experiments that explore the relationship between leaf traits, leaf physiology, and leaf longevity. (See the job ad for a more detailed description of the position and the project web page for more information about the project. Click on the "Dimensions of biodiversity" tag at the bottom of this post or in the tag cloud for some blog posts about the project.)
We'll start reviewing applications in late January. Please pass this ad along to anyone you know who might be interested.
Life Technologies created this stop-motion video to advertise its new Veriti Thermal Cycler. Whether you're a PCR geek or not, the animation is fascinating. Enjoy.
I guess I should say "Justin Timberlake, eat your heart out" except that (a) I barely know who Justin Timberlake is and (b) the only reason I know this video has anything to do with him is that it told me so itself.
What I can say is that Nathaniel Krefman, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, does a superb job of making sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) exciting. As Carin Bondar says, Awesome work Nathaniel!
Jane uploaded several photos from our field work to iSpot, and I've added my photo of Protea compacta. I plan to upload more photos over the weekend -- if Irene doesn't knock out my power and Internet connection. You'll be able to locate all of the photos from this summers fieldwork either by following the Photographs link from the project wiki or by going directly to the Dimensions research trip 2011 page on iSpot.
I'll post this link again when I've sorted through and posted all of my plant photos that are worth posting. There will also be a separate Picasa or Flickr album that has other photos, and I'll post a link to that when it's ready for viewing.
Protea compacta from the hill behind Kleinmond, 14 August 2011
After I've had time to sort through all of the photos I took on this trip, I'll post links to several galleries. We will also be setting up a Picasa web album for the whole project. It will include photos from many of those who were part of the Protea and Pelargonium teams as well as photos from the community ecology team.
Twelve hours from now I'll be on a plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg. About 37 hours from now I'll be landing at Bradley. It's hard to believe that this trip is coming to an end. Even though I know I've been away for nearly 4 weeks,1 we've been working so hard and getting so much done that it seems like just yesterday I arrived. So far the database for this part of the project has data from 28 species of Protea at 29 sites and 55 species of Pelargonium at 47 sites -- and there are at least 3 species of Protea and another 3 species of Pelargonium that haven't even been entered yet. And there's the collections that will happen later this week and next week in the Cederberg. By the time all is said and done, we'll have data from nearly 40 species of Protea and 70 species of Pelargonium. It's been a very successful trip.
I've even had time to run some preliminary analyses of the data, and the results look pretty interesting. We find relationships between weather variables and stomatal conductance in both genera, but they're generally stronger in Pelargonium, and we find strong relationships between leaf thickness and specific leaf area. Neither result is terribly surprising, but the comparisons between the genera (and probably among clades within each genus) promise to be very revealing. Stay tuned.
And if you're reading this on the main page of Uncommon Ground, click through to the next page to see another nice Protea flower.
Jane uploaded several photos from our field work to 
