Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology Scheduled for 15 and 16 October

10 October 2007 —Sean Carroll, professor of molecular biology and genetics and investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, will present the 2007 Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology on 15 and 16 October 2007 at the Penn State University Park campus. The free public lectures are sponsored by the Department of Biology and the Eberly College of Science.

The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and Evolution in Action," at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, 15 October 2007, in 112 Kern Building. Carroll will discuss some possible reasons why many amino-acid replacements appear to be driven by weak positive selection. "Analysis of DNA sequence variation within and between species confirms that many amino acid polymorphisms are deleterious," he explains, "but some harmful polymorphisms may become fixed in the genetic sequence."

Carroll also will give a more specialized lecture at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 October 2007, in Berg Auditorium, room 100 of the Life Sciences Building, titled "Endless Flies Most Beautiful: The Role of cis-Regulatory Sequences in the Evolution of Animal Diversity." Changes in animal form arise through changes in development, but for a very long time biologists have wanted to understand just how new structures and patterns arise. Contrary to expectations, the evolution of new genes has played a much lesser role in the evolution of form than has the evolution of gene regulatory sequences. Carroll will examine the role of cis-regulatory sequences in the evolution of animal form.

Carroll is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Shaw Scientist Award of the Milwaukee Foundation, numerous honorary lectureships, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Carroll's research has centered on those genes that control body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. He is the author of the new book, The Making of the Fittest (2006, W.W. Norton), and of Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (2005, W.W. Norton), which was a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Science and Technology) and the 2006 National Academy of Sciences Communication Award and was selected by USA Today and Discover as one of the top popular science books of 2005. He also is a coauthor, with Jen Grenier and Scott Weatherbee, of the textbook From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design (2nd ed; Blackwell Scientific).

Carroll earned his B.A. degree in biology at Washington University in St. Louis and his Ph.D. degree in immunology at Tufts Medical School. He carried out his postdoctoral research with Matthew Scott at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from the late Russell Marker, professor emeritus of organic chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics.

For additional information, contact the Department of Biology at 814-863-0278, or Professor Blair Hedges by telephone at 814-865-9991 or by email at: sbh1@psu.edu.

[ S G / B K K]