By Celina Scott-Buechler
Charles Darwin’s lament was that he would never seesignificant evolutionary changes occur in a species within his lifetime. Theprocess of species changing their genetic code and observable characteristics, he felt, was just too slow.
But now Philipp Messer, a new assistant professor in the Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, is helping to prove that Darwin may have come to that conclusion a little too fast.
“Evolution is often so rapid that you can actually observe it,” Messer said. “I’m not talking about the course of someone’s life. It could happen as quickly as within a few years.”
Messer’s research examines the rapid evolution of drug resistance in malaria parasites and other organisms. Drawing from his post-doctorate thesis at Stanford University on pesticide resistance in insects, he’s interested in what we can learn from such rapid adaptive responses about the process of evolution as a whole.
“The question we have is how can evolution be so fast,” Messer said. “To answer it, we’re using three angles that together give us a more complete picture of the complexities at work: theory, genomic data and computational modeling.”
Population genetic theory is based on Darwin’s insight into natural selection and mutation, in addition to later theories of genetic drift and gene flow. New genomic data is also added to the analysis, such as information gathered from malaria parasites being sequenced to see where the genes responsible for drug resistance are located in their genomes. Finally, Messer said, new and powerful computational modeling tools can nowadays simulate these processes in great detail – allowing us to probe and understand them.
“This is really cool because it’s highly relevant and pretty revolutionary,” Messer said. Discovering how drug resistance can often evolve so quickly has applications across many fields, including new insights into the evolution of cancer cells. In conservation science, evidence of rapid evolution shows that some species may be able to adapt to environmental changes as quickly as within a few generations.
“That’s not to say we shouldn’t be concerned about climate change and other human-caused phenomena, but it might help us to determine priorities,” Messer said.
He also noted that some of the most interesting discoveries still ahead will likely come as new research increases our insight into human evolution.
“Prior to the past few years, sequencing the human genome was possible but inefficient and very expensive,” Messer said. “Now, sequencing is becoming much more affordable, to a point where we can sequence the genomes of many individuals and study the genetic changes that underlie the biological differences between them, for example in disease susceptibility. In addition, all this genomic information is becoming more easily accessible via technology, which makes it more usable.”
“I don’t yet know what exactly this will mean for biology and medicine, but it definitely makes it an extremely exciting time to be a scientist in these fields.”
Celina Scott-Buechler is a student writer in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
