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Friday Evening Lecture Series
07/24/09
Lillie Auditorium, 8:00 PM
"The Microbial Engines that Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles"
Paul G. Falkowski, Rutgers University
Introduced by Dr. Mitchell Sogin
Lecture Abstract:
Over the past decade, we have developed an incredible technical ability to document the diversity of life on Earth. Indeed, DNA sequencing technology has advanced to such an extent we can identify many millions of genes in the oceans, and there is no end in immediate sight. However, if we look at the basic biological and geological reactions that allow all life on Earth to function, we are left with a very small number of genes and reactions. In the first 2.5 billion years of Earth’s history, nature went through a research and development phase, and created the microbial machines that drive all of life on the planet. Over the past 2 billion years, these reactions have been incorporated into new bodies with little change—a “Microsoft” evolution. In the first period, life created an electronic circuit that is continuously driven by energy from the Sun. The basic planetary functions are controlled by very few core genes—perhaps as few as 2,000. In this lecture, I will describe how little we know about the core metabolism of our planet, and how exciting it is to be a scientist today to work on these key problems that ultimately are critical to understanding two major unanswered questions in science: “Where did we come from?” and “Are we alone?” We may have a lot of technical ability to understand gene sequences, but we still don’t have the brains to solve these two questions, which, I argue, would change profoundly the dialogue of our nation.
Paul G. Falkowski is Board of Governors’ Professor in the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at Rutgers University. His scientific interests include evolution, paleoecology, photosynthesis, biophysics, biogeochemical cycles, and symbiosis. His current research efforts are directed towards understanding the co-evolution of biological and physical systems. Dr. Falkowski earned his B.S. and M.Sc. degrees from the City College of the City University of New York and his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Rhode Island, he joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1976 as a scientist in the newly formed Oceanographic Sciences Division. He served as head of the division from 1986 to 1991 and deputy chair in the Department of Applied Science from 1991 to1995 where he was responsible for the development and oversight of all environmental science programs. In 1996, he was appointed as the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Rutgers University in 1998. He received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992; the Huntsman Medal in 1998; the Hutchinson Prize in 2000; and the Vernadsky medal from the European Geosciences Union in 2007. In 2001, Dr. Falkowski was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union; in 2002, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2007, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences; and in 2008, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Dr. Mitchell Sogin will introduce Professsor Falkowski. Dr. Sogin founded the MBL’s Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution in 1996. Over its short history, The Bay Paul Center has become a focal point for collaborative research between molecular biologists, biochemists, parasitologists, ecologists, and other colleagues from the MBL’s summer and resident communities, and from around the world. Dr. Sogin’s research has made many important contributions towards understanding the evolutionary history of protists. His current research employs massively parallel sequencing technology to explore the diversity and relative abundance of different kinds of microorganisms in marine and terrestrial environments as well as the microbiomes of mammalian organisms. Dr. Sogin received his B.S and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Prior to relocating to the MBL in 1989, he was an associate professor at the University of Colorado and was a Miller Professor at the University of California in Berkeley. Dr. Sogin is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, He has served on the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board and is a member of the American Society of Microbiology, the Society of Protozoologists, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, and the American Society for Cell Biology. He serves on the editorial boards of Environmental Microbiology and Protist.
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