Adrienne’s Life Goals (List started December, 1996 and updated each year since then) I’ve bolded the ones that I accomplished since I last updated the list last year.

1. Rollerblade in every major city in the world (Don’t know if I want to do this one any more or not. I’m really not all that into rollerblading. Biking might be a more feasible option).
2. Win a Nobel Prize
3. Study insects in the Australian Canopy (I used to get a magazine as a kid that advertised scientist-led trips in the back. One was a trip to the Australian Rainforest where you’d get to help survey the insects. They said you’d probably find several new species. I have to get there).
4. Become fluent in Spanish (took it in high school, remember little)
5. Be written about in some major tabloid
6. Make a major discovery in cancer research
7. Breed some sort of animal (I finished this one in 1998–I bred crane flies, beetles, crickets, and whatever else my boss brought in for a year)
8. Get married and raise a family (Part one–done 9/3/00! So that part two thing won’t work. Anyhow.)
9. Get a PhD in Entomology (Done (ish)! I successfully defended my dissertation in December of 2011, so I’m kinda counting this). 
10. Make a major entomological discovery (I’m really not sure what counts as “major.” I guess I’ll figure that out as I go along)
11. Become a college professor
12. Ear $20,000 a year with my harp (I think I will work on this in 2012)
13. Read the entire works of Shakespeare (did I mention I’m really into Shakespeare?)
14. Learn to ride a bike well (I’ve decided the tandem doesn’t count, but is a hell of a lot less scary than riding alone)
15. Study insects in Madagascar (the first day of my high school freshman geography class the teacher gave us the coordinates for Madagascar. I’ve wanted to go ever since)
16. Visit Kangaroo Island
17. Become the president of something major
18. Be able to give my Alma Mater something big, and have something on campus named after me
19. Rollerblade 10 miles (so, I didn’t have a bike as a kid. I taught myself to rollerblade instead. Don’t do it so much anymore, but for awhile there it was my only means of transportation)
20. Become fluent in sign language
21. Take a major biking or blading trip
22. Become very physically fit
23. Graduate from any higher education institution with a 3.0 or higher (I vote I’m done with school!!)
24. Work at the Smithsonian
25. Lear how to spell “Smithsonian” (Done! 1996. Have I mentioned I’m dyslexic? Oh, man, in 5th grade we had spelling tests every week, and my teacher made anyone who failed go to detention after school on Fridays and copy the dictionary. I got through “C” by the end of the year. She was nice enough not to make me go right before Christmas break and the last week of school. After my year she stopped using that as a punishment for bad spelling. I am a liberator of 5th graders!)
26. Live to be 100 (This one will take me awhile)
27. Own a motorcycle (Done! 1999. It got stolen, but who’s counting?)
28. Fall in love (Done! Valentine’s Day, 1997. Can you guess who?)
29. Write a book
30. Visit Canada (Done! 2005. Our anniversary. We took a ferry from Washington)
31. Take a cruise (Done! Alaska. Awesome). 
32. Become the best in Entomology
33. Be rich enough to buy my parents a cabin or car (Part of this list was written when I was a starving student. I mean, really starving…like ducking the landlord, saving up for Taco Bell starving. I lived on popcorn and oatmeal for most of a year. I was super thin)
34. Own a home in Australia
35. Travel the world
36. Own a large house with my husband (I also wrote a good portion of this list right when I met Dean, so “husband” and “love” are mentioned a bunch) (Done! 7/2008:  4 bedrooms is large, right?)
37. Have a large wedding (Done! 9/3/00)
38. Tour Iceland
39. Visit Greenland (Notice I don’t want to tour Greenland)
40. Know a song on the harp by every major composer (As soon as I define what a “major” composer is, I’ll get started on this one)
41. Meet someone famous (so, who’s gonna be famous so I can check this off? I’ve met a bunch of famous forensic entomologists, but I’m not counting them for some reason.)
42. Begin an Art, science and cultural center
43. Weigh 120-135 as long as it’s healthy (it stopped being healthy a while ago–right around the infertility time)
44. Create a cross stitch tapestry (Working on it!)
45. Learn to draw (Done! Spring 2000. I’m no Ivan, but it’s good enough for government work)
46. Learn to tango (Done! Summer 2000. I hated it)
47. Get a degree in something totally unrelated (Done! June, 2007. I have a degree in Emergency Prehospital Care. If you’re dying, call me! I’ll tell you to go to the hospital)
48. Own a company (Done! 2011. Have ya heard of New Republic Brewing? No? Look it up!)
49. Maintain a very large garden
50. Arrange a musical festival
51. Go on an African safari
52. Be someone’s inspiration
53. Stay in the best hotels in the world
54. Backpack across America
55. Sponsor a Shakespeare festival
56. Throw at least 1 major formal party
57. Tour England
58. Visit every major museum in the world
59. Love wine (Done! I have no idea when this happened exactly….)
60. Become adept at herbal studies
61. Study at least 3 religions other than Methodist (Done! Mormonism, Judaism and Jehovah’s Witness. I ended up with a boyfriend in each religion, which really made the study easy. Mormons wear sacred underwear. Don’t tell them you know!)
62. Watch or be in every Shakespeare play
63. Organize 5 missions (So I grew up in a Methodist church, and Methodists are really into volunteering. All through high school I went on youth missions organized by the church–I’ve been to Mexico 12 or 13 times to work on churches and houses, I went to Yuma, Arizona several times and worked on the Indian reservation there, and I helped organize a huge mission to Alaska, but I couldn’t go. This is the one thing I miss about not going to church anymore. My old church went to Mississippi last spring to rebuild houses destroyed in hurricane Katrina. I wish I could’ve gone)
64. Study scarab beetles (they’re shiny!)
65. Visit Egypt
66. Never have to worry about money (once again, I was a starving student at this point….)
67. Become adept at rock climbing
68. Visit every state in the union (I’m working on it!)
69. Visit Easter Island
70. Perform in a large theater (Done! Christmas 1997 and 1998. I was part of a Christmas show playing in LA. I played the harp–3500 seats in that theater)
71. Visit Morocco (Ah…here comes my travel list….)
72. Visit Sri Lanka
73. Visit the Philippines (Earl? When we going?)
74. Visit Norway
75. Study cancer (When I add to my list each year, I sometimes don’t go back and review everything first, so there are a few duplicates. Apparently I really want to do these things)
76. Visit France
77. Visit the Eiffel Tower (just in case I was gonna miss it while in France….)
78. Visit the Statue of Liberty again (I saw it when my class went there in Jr. High, but I was a bit boy crazy and didn’t really care about the big green woman)
79. Visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa
80. Stay in a small Russian town
81. Go to a health spa (Done! I now do this as regularly as possible)
82. Win a major contest
83. Become a photographer (I don’t think I have much of an eye, but I can try)
84. Visit Dublin
85. Become monetarily comfortable (still hungry!)
86. Own a store
87. Learn to fence (Done! 2004. Hated it!)
88. Learn a martial arts (Done! 2004, black belt in kenjo ki karate–better known as kickboxing)
89. Visit a homeless family
90. Learn massage
91. Write a major research paper (Done! June 2007. It’s going to publication this year W00t!!)
92. Work in a vineyard (Done! Spring 1997, Cal Poly SLO. 1 year. It was fun)
93. Witness a controlled burn (Done! Summer 1998. We had to do several controlled burns in the orchard that summer)
94. Save an insect species
95. Discover an insect species (I like me some insect species)
96. Biologically solve a pest problem (I haven’t decided if I want to do this on a grand scale or not…if not, then done! I’ll leave it unmarked for now, though)
97. Read Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Hans Christian Andersen series, The Metamorphasis, The Fountainhead, It, The Lord of the Rings, and a book by Chaucer. (Some of these are done. The hardest so far is The Lord of the Rings. How do people get through this?!?)
98. Fall asleep in a hammock overlooking a beautiful beach and sea under a full moon (Aw! Aren’t I romantic?)
99. Learn to horseback (Done! Did you know that Dean’s grandfather raised horses?)
100. Take a trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
101. Be interviewed by the press (Done! 2005 FFAS conference. CNN interviewed me about entomology)
102. Go to England to see the Shakespeare Festival
103. Help to solve a crime (Done! I’m a forensic entomologist!)
104. Learn to belly dance (I keep meaning to do this one. Someone help!)
105. Discover the purpose of an insect and use those facts to save it from extinction
106. Write out the entire rocky scrip, block it and use it to get a show started (This is half done–I have the script.)
107. Plan an orchard
108. Read the Bible (This may end up harder than finishing Lord of the Rings)
109. Read the Book of Mormon (And this will be harder than the Bible)
110. Read the entire works of Edgar Allen Poe
111. Build my own harp (You can get kits for not that much and build your own lap harp. Want!)
112. Visit all the National Parks
113. Live in France
114. Design and build a custom lab for my work
115. Have a maid or cleaning service (I don’t do windows! Or any other cleaning, for that matter)
116. Visit all the amusement parks in the U.S.
117. Design a set (Done! Fall 1997. I designed the sets for a performance of Hamlet)
118. Be a main part in a show
119. Picnic on top of a mountain (Wouldn’t this be fun? Hint!)
120. Ride the trolly in San Francisco (Done! Summer 1998)
121. Try Sushi (Done! And I never looked back)
122. See 100 Rocky Horror Picture Shows (I’m at 82)
123. Plan a very romantic trip somewhere and take it with someone I love (Done! We went to Costa Rica for our honeymoon)
124. Help someone in need (I don’t think I’ll ever mark this one off, no matter how many times I do it)
125. Buy my own car (We’ve been given our last several, so I haven’t really had the chance yet. Not that I’m complaining…we’ll happily take anyone’s car off their hands! It’s what we do!)
126. Visit Alaska (Done! Summer 2010)
127. Be loved by someone I’m not related to (Done!)
128. Don’t die lonely
129. Retire
130. Fall asleep in someone’s arms (Done!)
131. Have my own CD
132. Pass Music Theory 1 (Done! I got a B! Stupid class)
133. Figure out how to raise Jerusalem Crickets (Done! Those bastards are a pain in the ass to raise. And they bite super hard!)
134. Finance my education (Done! That was hard, and now I’m in debt forever, but done!)
135. Create a large folder of research on raising insects (Done! 2011)
136. Have something published (Done! July 2008, my very first article. Ask me and I’ll let you read it!)
138. Turn my car into a work of art (Done! You should have seen it….)
139. Get an A in Beekeeping (Done! Easiest A ever. I like bees)
140. Manage my own beehive (Just might happen soon…I have plans)
141. Have a webpage (Done! Ah, remember the early days of the web when webpages were novel and only geeks had them?)
142. Get into grad school (Done! For years and years!)
143. Learn to sew (Done! July 2008. I learned, now I just have to get good at it)
144. Finish the Chaos book (It’s a book about Chaos theory. I really only started reading it because I was dating this super cute math major who told me it was good. It’s sitting on the shelf with a 10 year old bookmark in it. I’ll get back to it eventually. I’ll probably have to start from the beginning, though. That’s gonna suck)
145. Create at least one of my clothing designs (So I took this design class for my minor–I had to design clothes. I based all of them on insects)
146. Get an award from a scientific association
147. Get certified in some aspect of entomology
148. Present an original paper at a scientific meeting (Done! June 2008. Presented “Seasonal Distribution and Abundance of Forensically Important Flies in Santa Clara County. It was well received)
149. Get my masters (Done! June 2007)
150. Save 1 million dollars
151. Buy a house (Done! July 2008, and it’s beautiful. Come and visit! We have cookies)
152. Visit every state in the nation (See what I mean about duplicates?)
153. Start a consulting business (Plans, again. Plans.)
154. Read every book in the library (Wanna watch? Or help? Join me!)
155. Visit every country in the world
156. Learn to ride a motorcycle (Yep, this is gonna be done this year. Someone teach me, please!)
157. Climb a mountain
158. Start a journal (Done! 2006. I now have blogs instead)
159. Volunteer somewhere
160. Write a book (I must really want to write that damn book!)
161. Be on tv
163. Create an intricate treasure hunt
164. See a musical on Broadway
165. Be self employed with an actual income
166. Own a cabin
167. Plant 100 trees
168. Read 1000 books (up to 310 since I started counting)
169. See an iceberg (Done! 2010)
170. Get rid of that dead place inside of me (Done! 2007 or 2008. Ask me about it sometime, if you really want to know)
171. Ride a snowmobile
172. Take a speed reading course (Done! 2009. It was bullshit)
173. Learn to surf
174. Walk across a swingy suspension bridge (Done! Malaysia, 2011)
175. Arrange a harp song
176. Learn Latin
177. Visit Walden pond (Then talk about it all snooty like)
178. Create a hedge maze (How cool is my house gonna be?!?)
179. Be a groomsman (You see, I’ve been every part of a wedding–Bride, bridesmaid, acolyte, harpist, flower girl, officiant, guest on the bride’s side, guest on the groom’s side, but I’ve never been a groomsman. That would complete my takeover of all things wedding!)
180. Have a grand library (With a fireplace and leather chairs and a secret door) (I’m so close!)
181. Have a cabin on a lake
182. Take a gondola ride (Hey! Another great date idea!)
183. Hold a hawk
184. Rehabilitate a wild animal
185. Fire a sniper rifle
186. Fire an automatic weapon
187. Fly first class across the ocean
188. Go hot air ballooning
189. Stay on a houseboat
190. Go hang gliding (But not by myself–with a trained professional so I won’t die. I want to live to be 100, remember?)
191. Do that thing with the parachute hanging off a boat (Doesn’t that sound like fun!?!)
192. visit the Bermuda Triangle (And not get lost)
193. Put $500 a month in my IRA (Up to $350 a month, as of now. See…I’m well on my way to saving 1 million!)
194. Go see the Ice Hotel (I love the Discovery Channel)
195. See Grand Central Station
196. Drive across America, coast to coast
197. Climb the highest mountain in California
198. Renovate a house
199. Cross the Panama Canal
200. Finish the world’s largest crossword puzzle (Don’t really know if I want to do this one any more, but there you are)
201. Go a month without TV (Done! 2008. I was super busy, and TV is the first to go)
202. Buy some aboriginal art in Australia (I blame Chris and Yanira for this–stupid HDTV showing Australia and stuff!)
203. Be married for 60 years (at least!)
204. Make a quilt
205. Go white water rafting
206. Own a sports car (A green RX-7)
207. Buy a house in Costa Rica (Love it there!)
208. Bike 1000 miles in a year
209. Create the perfect, craveable Thanksgiving dinner (I think I’m close! I shall see)
210. Ride the orient express
211. Stay in a haunted hotel (Done! 2009, actually…we stayed in Le Pavllion in New Orleans, and apparently it’s haunted. Who knew?)
212. Be under 30% body fat
213. Be nominated for a teaching award (Done! Fall, 2008, distinguished teaching award at Texas A&M)
214. Visit the poles (The South and North poles you dirty minded people!)
215. Go sailing
216. Go on an Alaskan cruise (Yep, really wanted to, and now we have!)
217. Attend a movie premiere
218. Spend over 2 weeks at a nice hotel just enjoying the grounds (I got this idea from reading The Shining. Maybe that’s where I got the haunted hotel idea, too)
219. Attend the Rockettes Christmas Show (I hear this is great!)
220. Celebrate Day of the Dead in Mexico (you know, after they figure out all the drug killings and kidnappings. Still wanna live to 100)
221. Adopt a toddler or baby (Decided this year we will not adopt. Gonna leave this one on the list just to remember, though)
222. Visit the Louvre (I wonder if that’s even close to how it’s spelled)
223. Kiss Dean in Paris
224. Do a food tour of the USA: Pizza in Chicago, Blue Crabs in Maryland, Cheese Steak in Philly, (and a bunch of other stuff I haven’t come up with yet)
225. Learn how to write my name in Japanese
226. Celebrate Christmas in New York and London
227. Air Boat the Everglades
228. Pay off my student loans ($32,000 and counting….)
229. Become known for great Thanksgivings
230. Have an art show (Maggot art, baby!)
231. Live in the mountains
232. Take a trip in a motor home
233. See the great barrier reef (But there’s no need to scuba dive…I’m morally against going anywhere I have to take my own oxygen. We need it to survive, people!)
234. Create a secret garden (I love that book! And play! And movie!)
235.Drink mint julep in the French Quarter (Done! June 2009. It was super fun. We bought art).
236.Enter a cooking contest
237. Have a pool
238. Put all my photos/mementos in scrapbooks (Done! It’ll be an on going process from this point on, but most of it is computerized now)
239. See all the movies on AFI’s top 100 list (30 down, 70 to go)
240. Visit Alcatraz
241. Try real absinthe (Done! 2007. It tastes like licorice, and has no hallucinogenic effects)
242. volunteer at a homeless shelter or food bank
243. Look good in a 2 piece
244. Have $100,000 in my IRA
245. Paint a really big painting
246. Get certified with a handgun
247.Ride all the rollercoasters in the US (30 down, 602 to go!)
248. Work at Quantico
249. Get 5 articles published
250. Go back to London, at least once
251. Have a real office that I don’t have to move out of every semester
252. Pass my quals (Done!!!!)
253. Write my lab manual
254. Own some art by someone famous
255. Become a consultant (a final duplicate!)
256: Win a teaching award (Done! December 2009. I won the Vice Chancellor’s award for graduate student teaching. Woo!)
257: Build three projects for the house
258: Build a deck
259: Sew a dress that looks good on me
260: Learn how to tailor clothes and tailor some of my own.
261: Learn to fold a fitted sheet

Just a few done this year, but gearing up for another great 365 days. What are your goals?

–Adie

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Celebrate the life and happiness we have

We celebrated our 10 year anniversary last September with an Alaskan cruise.  We stay out late and listen to live music and her migraines due to hormone replacement are far more infrequent.  Adrienne spent ten days in Malaysia.  We continue to thrive despite my layoff eight months ago.

Emphasize accomplishments

Adie passed her PhD qualifying exams and is nearly finished!  I founded a brewery and a freelance software company.   These things are not impossible with children in tow, but I would feel much more pressure to stabilize our income and she to stay home if there was more responsibility over our heads.

Show that we are whole people

Any -ectomy takes something beyond guts & viscera away from a person.  As time goes on this feeling fades.  You’ll have to take it from Adrienne, because I don’t really know what it’s like.

I’ll close the same way I did last year: we are not the only ones.

So many couples and singles struggle with their sense of childless self worth.
Think of them on this day.  If you would like to help, it is simple as a phone call, email, tweet or Facebook post just to say “hi” or to remind someone of the good they do.

This day is not about trying or failing to be a parent.  We need neither sympathy nor reminders of our “enviable freedom” and that parenthood is “not all joy“.  At the same time the day’s purpose is not to belittle family.  Remember, Adrienne and I still make a family.  Reinforce the good things that all of do.

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The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code is not a comedic document yet I laughed aloud after reading Subchapter C Section 102.51.  It goes something like this:

SUBCHAPTER C. TERRITORIAL LIMITS ON SALE OF BEER

Sec. 102.51. SETTING OF TERRITORIAL LIMITS. (a) Each holder of a manufacturer’s or nonresident manufacturer’s license shall designate territorial limits in this state within which the brands of beer the licensee manufactures may be sold by general, local, or branch distributor’s licensees.
(b)    Each holder of a general, local, or branch distributor’s license shall enter into a written agreement with each manufacturer from which the distributor purchases beer for distribution and sale in this state setting forth the sales territory within which each brand of beer purchased by that distributor may be distributed and sold. No holder of a general, local, or branch distributor’s license shall make any sales of any brand of beer outside the sales territory specified in the written agreement. No such agreement shall interfere with the rights of retailers to purchase beer as provided in Section 102.53. A manufacturer may not assign all or any part of the same sales territory to more than one distributor. A copy of the agreement and any amendments to it shall be filed with the administrator.
(c)    This Act is promulgated pursuant to the authority of the state under the provisions of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution to promote the public interest in the fair, efficient, and competitive distribution of beer, to increase competition in such areas, and to assure product quality control and accountability by allowing manufacturers to assign sales territories within this state.

Seriously?  Allowing only exclusive distribution rights is intended to promote competition.  This is the sort of legislation the distributor’s lobby fights for and what small brewers are up against.  Increase competition indeed!

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At first I was going to detail how to make a friend list, put people in it and edit your privacy settings all in that little box.  Instead you get a blog post with pretty images.

An Allegory

LinkedIn is the “social network” for your co-workers. I keep track of a lot of people there.  Sometimes you like a person you work with enough to go to a Judas Priest concert with and you totally have to share that picture of you two with K.K. Downing.   So now you and Judas Co-worker are friends and she’s friends with that annoying guy in accounting who sees her tagged in a photo with a Grammy award winning guitarist and you.  That leads to Ned McNedly pressing the + Add as Friend button on your profile and you don’t really want the boss’s son to see how much you play Dumbo Racer.  Sometimes the network works against you.

If you can’t send Ned to you clinically app-free LinkedIn profile you can friend him without giving away too many personal details.  Time for some pretty pictures!

Go to that giant time-waster (that’s not the way I really feel about you Facebook, don’t be mad) and click on the Account button, then Edit Friends (where is this functionality IRL? JK I <3 u just the way you r).

Press the + Create a List button.  Call it something that would burn the soulless zombies you work with to their very core if they knew they were on your list.

Lists are a great tool for categorizing your friends.

Now to shut out the unworthy.  Click Account again and choose Privacy Settings.  You should see a giant field titled Sharing on Facebook.  Change to Custom, then click Customize Settings.

On the next screen you can “control” all the privacy leakages social networking enables.  Try it out.  Pull down the control next to Posts by Me and choose Customize.

Type the name of your new list in the Hide this From box and you can safely play Dumbo Racer all day long.

How Do You Know It’s Working?

Facebook gives you a way to check what your profile looks like to other people.  Click on Account then Privacy Settings.  You get the Sharing on Facebook screen pictured above.  Choose Customize Settings again.  In the upper right there will be a button labeled Preview my Profile.  Try that.

Do like it says and start typing a friend’s name to see the world in their eyes.

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I am also looking outside the company.  Perhaps you, or someone you know, is looking for a system architect.  I specialize in Solaris and linux with experience developing for Blackberry and iPhone.  My resume will elaborate.

Although I have only worked for companies with more than 40,000 employees I think I would rather like to join a small or medium sized company.

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I live here! Awesome.

But I (sarcastically) digress. My main point for this essay is to discuss an interesting development that occurred nearly 50 years after Darwin wrote his abstract “On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.”

(Did you notice that I called it an “abstract?” You see, Darwin had been working on his book for over 20 years when it finally came out–and it only came out when it did because another young scientist had happened upon the same idea and Darwin didn’t want 20 years of thought and work to go down the drain. So instead of publishing the 1200 page opus he originally planned, Darwin cut it down to a svelt few hundred pages and called it an abstract. Just an historical tidbit).

Oh Kanye...will this never get old?

Anyhow, Darwin’s ideas have not been taken at face value since the moment his pen hit paper. As with most scientific ideas, they have been analyzed, discussed, tested, reworked, and improved upon until they are almost unrecognizable in their original form. This is why I love science so much–the ideas are constantly changing and improving, and each member of the community has the opportunity, nay, duty, to suport or falsify the concepts that came before.

But that’s a bit too “philosophy of science” for this post. No, what I’m attempting to explain here is the concept of modern evolutionary synthesis, commonly called “the new synthesis” or “neo-Darwinism.”

So, in 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and it sparked a huge reaction. His main ideas can be summed up in four major points:

1. There is variation within species

2. These variations can be passed on to offpsring

3. Each generation sees too many offspring born than can possibly survive

4. The survival and subsequent reproduction of offspring isn’t random; those that do survive long enough to reproduce, or those that reproduce the most have the most favorable characteristics. Those characteristics are passed on to offspring. Those characteristics are naturally selected.

What’s interesting is Darwin did not put for the idea of evolution–in fact, the word “evolved” is only used once in the entire book, and is the last word of the last chapter. Evolution as a concept had been around since the mid 1700′s, and was generally accepted even by the devoutly religious as a plausible explanation of animal life. What people didn’t know was HOW evolution worked, and there were many scientists putting forth various hypothesis to explain the mechanism.

Darwin came up with his ideas after years on board a ship, and collecting and observing all manner of life forms across the world. He then let the idea fester in his mind for over 20 years and slowly developed the over arching idea that evolution occurs through small variation from generation to generation, and that the most beneficial variations are conserved through natural selection.

The biggest problem with the idea of natural selection back in Darwin’s day, however, was no one could quite figure out how it actually worked. The evidence made sense (and Darwin does a beautiful job of beating the reader over the head with chapter after chapter of evidence for natural selection), but the actual mechanisms of inheritance still eluded the best scientists of the time. The debate raged on.

Meanwhile, off in Germany, a little known monk by the name of Gregor Mendel was doing some experiments with pea plants.

I eat my peas with honey, I've done it all my life....

Mendel figured out that traits were passed from generation to generation in a mathematically predictable manner. The problem was few people knew about his work. He published it in 1865, about 6 years after the first edition of On the Origin of Species, but all evidence suggests that Darwin never read the paper. Both Darwin and Mendel died before someone figured out to link the two ideas together.

But get linked together they did (Yay for literature searches!!). The 20th century saw some clever person pick up both pieces of work and think “Huh. This seems to work well together!” Mix in the discovery of genes and the idea of population genetics, and you get an explosion of evolutionary ideas that united a formerly divided group of scientists.

After a few decades of experiments and nobel prizes, the New Synthesis was born, and incorporated the ideas of both natural selection and genetics:

1. Populations contain randomly derived genetic variation accomplished through mutation and recombination

2. Gene frequency within populations changes through genetic drift (allele frequency change due to random sampling), gene flow (the transfer of alleles from one population to another), and natural selection

3. Most adaptive genetic variants have slight phenotypic effects, so change in phenotype is gradual

4. Speciation involves gradual evolution of reproductive isolation among populations, and is what causes diversification

5. The processes of speciation over a long enough time cause changes so great that higher taxonomic levels are necessary (genera, families, orders, etc.).

Basically, the modern evolutionary synthesis is the application of Darwin’s idea of natural selection to Mendel’s idea of inherited characteristics, with a little bit of Watson and Crick mixed in.

Hey! We discovered the structure of DNA!

Of course, listing the 5 major ideas of any paradigm simplifies it a little too much. These ideas were created by numerous scientists over the course of a decade, and represent some of the greatest ideas evolutionary biologists have had.

The major names associated with modern evolutionary synthesis are Julian Huxley, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, Sergei Chetverikov, Theodosius Dobzhansky, E.B. Ford, Ernst Mayr, Sewall Wright, George Gaylord Simpson, G. Ledyard Stebbins, and Bernhard Rensch.

Julian Huxley is credited with coining the term “modern evolutionary synthesis” in a book he wrote in 1942 Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. Julian Huxley was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the man known as “Darwin’s bulldog” due to his dogged defense of Darwin’s ideas. So I suppose it’s no surprise that Julian Huxley would carry on that tradition two generations later by bringing Darwin’s ideas into the 20th century. Julian’s book merges the revolutionary ideas of population genetics and genetic inheritance with natural selection by approaching genes from a natural selection standpoint. The book has two major editions, and has just recently been rereleased.

Of course, Huxley did quite a bit more than simply write a book–the years up to the writing of this work were filled with evolutionary research and the years after were filled with the same. He will forever be known as the man who coined the term, however.

R.A. Fisher is the guy responsible for such statistical break throughs as Fisher’s exact test and the ANOVA. I blame him for making stats such a pain in the butt! And so very useful. Thanks Fisher! Anyhow, Fisher was an active mathematician and geneticist during the first half of the 20th century. His interest in eugenics, mathematics, and evolution gave him the tools to become the founder of quantitative genetics. He spent much of his time attempting to calculate the distribution of gene frequencies among populations. Geez! I also had problems with those calculations in  my molecular ecology courses! Apparently this guy is responsible for all the difficult homework I’ve had over the last two years. Thanks, Fisher.

JBS Haldane is the second of three important mathematicians that helped to quantify rates of changes in gene frequencies (the first being RH Fisher). In 1932 Haldane penned a book entitled The Causes of Evolution, which summarized his work on the mathematical theory of natural selection.  Haldane went on to write an essay called On Being the Right Size, which postulates that physical size is often what determines the equipment necessary for life in a given species. This idea is referred to as Haldane’s principle by modern biologists. On a humorous note, Haldane famously answered the question “What can be inferred about the mind of the Creator form the works of His Creation” with “An inordinate fondness of beetles.”

Funny and sarcastic scientists are the best!

Sergei Chetverikov was one of several Russian scientists that ventured into the world of evolutionary biology in the early 20th century. Chetverikov worked with fruit flies, and in 1926 wrote a paper that bridged early theories of genetic evolution with real world populations. He found that the process of mutation was the same in natural, laboratory, and domesticated populations; most mutations are deleterious but there  ere some that do not reduce viability; a randomly mating population is stable; new mutations are absorbed by heterozygous individuals; mutations gradually spread through the population by chance (a very early concept of genetic drift); and isolation and genotypic variability lead to differentiation. These concepts are just a few put forth in his major work, which, unfortunately, was only published in Russian. Luckily, Haldane had a translated copy and was able to make use of these concepts during the new synthesis.

Theodosius Dobzhansky is another influential Russian scientist, although he had the distinction of moving to America during his seminal research years. Dobzhansky, a geneticist by trade, is credited with writing a major work on modern evolutionary synthesis: Genetics and the Origin of Species. This work defines evolution as “a change in the frequency of an allele within a gene pool” and is responsible for spreading the idea that natural selection takes place through mutations on genes. He is also credited with the famous phrase “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” which is the title to a famous article in which he articulates the conflict of evolution and creation.

E.B. Ford was a student of Julian Huxley at Oxford, and spent his career working on insects. He is responsible for the field of ecological genetics, and was on good working terms with Dobzhansky and Fisher, with whom he exchanged numerous letters and ideas. Ford formalized the definition of genetic polymorphism (when two or more clearly different genotypes exist within a single species), and used his knowledge of Lepidoptera to test and eventually prove many of Fisher’s predictions. Ford’s most famous student was Bernard Kettlewell, who conducted experiments on the evolution of melanism in the peppered moth, an experiment which delights and annoys students to this day.  On a side note, Ford campaigned for the legalization of male homosexuality in his native Britain. Just an FYI.

Ernst Mayr (pronounced ”Mire”) was a taxonomist and naturalist who was the youngest of the modern synthesis boys (he died only recently in 2005). His major book was Systematics and the Origin of Species in 1942, in which he helped to define the biological species concept: a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed exclusively among themselves. He suggest the concept of peripatric speciation, in which populations of adjacent yet isolated individuals will, though genetic drift and natural selection, evolve into distinct species over a period of time. Mayr was a voice of dissension among the modern synthesis crew, insisting that natural selection acted upon the whole organism and not individual genes. He also criticized molecular evolutionary studies. Huh. Maybe he was kind of a jerk. A smart jerk, but a jerk none the less.

Sewall Wright is the third mathematician that I blame for all those damn calculations I had to do in molecular ecology. He worked with Fisher and Haldane on the concept of population genetics, and discovered the inbreeding coefficient.

George Gaylord Simpson (hee! Gaylord) was an influential paleontologist during the early 20th century, and lent a much needed historical perspective to the new synthesis. He wrote several works including The Meaning of Evolution and The Major Features of Evolution, and was an expert on extinct mammals and their migratory patterns. He is known for coining the term hypodigm (a sample from which the characteristics of a population may be inferred), and he predicted the concept of punctuated equilibrium years before it was officially put forth by Dawkins.

G. Ledyard Stebbins is the lone botanist in this crew, and studied the evolutionary biology of plants at Berkeley. He wrote Variation and Evolution in Plants, which, by many, is considered a core of the evolutionary synthesis. His work on polyploidy and speciation in plants has influenced nearly all botanists since his time. When speaking of his own work, he never considered his contributions unique; he simply thought he was applying evolutionary biology and genetics to plants, and describing how these concepts affected botany as a whole.

Bernhard Rensch is the lone German of this group, and is responsible for popularizing the new synthesis in his native country. His primary work involved explaining how the concepts that drove speciation could be used to describe higher taxa. He also worked in areas of animal behavior.

It’s almost magical how just the right people with the right backgrounds in the right areas all were studying at the same time, isn’t it? It’s a tribute to the beauty of the scientific method, I think, to see how each man’s ideas were disseminated and used by the others to eventually create a paradigm shift in the way biologists think about evolution.

–Adrienne

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As the recession continues states look for ways to fix budget shortfalls.  Raising or enacting taxes is politically incendiary in an election year but one state saw a way to increase revenue.  Last year North Carolina asked Amazon for information about goods it shipped (complete with names & addresses) to residents between 2003 and 2010.  It intended to collect sales tax owed by the good people of NC.

Even though Amazon does not charge sales tax on purchases the buyer may be responsible for paying come April 15th.  North Carolina asked for records revealing identities and purchases as part of a tax audit of the online retailer.  Amazon replied with detailed information regarding the items purchased, dates, amount of purchases, and county to which the items were shipped, but no personally identifying information.  The state acknowledged the information is sufficient to assess sales taxes, but pressed for all the requested details.

With the aid of the ACLU Amazon fought back citing the First Amendment, specifically the Video Privacy Protection Act which bars “wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records.”  Since passage in 1988 the protection was extended to cover DVDs, video games and books.  The federal district court in Seattle, Washington ruled in favor of Amazon.

Withholding the information was financially disadvantageous to the company because Amazon could not claim potential deductions, resulting in a higher tax bill.  They did the right thing in the face of monetary loss.

The cynic in me sees Amazon putting up a great public relations campaign in favor of privacy, all the while selling our personal information in secret to other companies.  Other states, including my home state of Texas, are pursuing uncollected tax revenue from Amazon and making a strong showing against the Tar Heel State may bolster their other cases.

Overall it is a win for privacy and I’ll take it.

References:

• How North Carolina Overreached in Its Sales Tax Battle With Amazon
• Court Rules North Carolina Not Entitled to Amazon Customer Information
• Texas Sends Amazon a $269 Million Sales Tax Bill

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This is my brain. Bystanders beware!

I guess I’ll work on just knowing what I can. Let’s get to it, shall we?

First up, my plan of attack. There’s a lot of information out there about biofilms (they’re the darling of the microbiology world at the moment, and lots of time and effort is going into studying them), so there’s no way I’ll be able to memorize everything about them in the next few weeks. What I can do, however, is focus on a model specimen, and know everything about that particular model.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacterium that is frequently found in biofilms, and happens to be one of the most studied species in the biofilm world. (This is probably due to its annoying tendency to infect humans).

Skin lesions caused by aeruginosa. So gross!

This makes it the perfect subject for me to use as my model specimen. Let’s get to it!

First and foremost: what are biofilms?

Biofilms are communities of microorganisms embedded and immobilized in an extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) attached to a solid surface. The biofilm gives microorganisms protection from things like desiccation, predation, and antibiotics, and allows them to share water and nutrients. It has also been proposed that biofilms allow for the sharing of DNA, thereby facilitating the transfer of beneficial genes from cell to cell. This community organization is in direct opposition to the way we have studied microorganisms for many years: as free living single-celled organisms (called planktonic organisms).

Bacteria in a biofilm in a creek. Kinda gross looking.

Planktonic bacteria just being all lonely.

Biofilms are highly variable, and their exact make up and structure changes with species, temperature, stress, nutrients, and other environmental factors. While this is super annoying for those of us who want to know everything about biofilms, it’s actually a very good strategy for the micro communities that utilize these biofilms as environments: great diversity keeps a single organsim from decimating the world-wide biofilm population.

What makes a biofilm a biofilm is the presence of the extracellular polymeric substance (EPS for short).

"Extracellular" is outside the cell; "polymeric" is a repeated molecular unit

This stuff was originally called “extracellular polysaccharides” until scientists figured out that there were lipids, proteins and DNA involved as well. Luckily, they were able to come up with a phrase that kept the EPS acronym, so everything worked out in the end.

In order to form biofilms, planktonic bacteria go through five primary stages of biofilm development:

1. Initial attachment

2. Irreversible attachment

3. Maturation I

4. Maturation II

5. Dispersal

The five stages.

I’ll look at these in order, using P. aeruginosa as a model organism.

1. Initial attachment.

First and foremost, the planktonic bacteria need to get to the surface of something in order to form a biofilm (remember that the definition of a biofilm is a community of bacteria embedded in an external matrix attached to a solid surface). Pseudomonas aeruginosa does this via diffusive transport

Remember this type of diffusion drawing from your bio classes? Yep, bacteria move the same way.

convective transport

convective transport is when the bacteria gets carried along with the movement of a fluid...kinda like a surfer on a wave

and active transport driven by bacterium flagella.

This species has a single, polar flagellum that it uses to move.

Once the bacterial cells arrive at an appropriate spot, they attach to the surface. They are able to attach due to their flagellum, type IV pili, extracellular DNA, and Psl polysaccharides.

The flagellum is involved in attachment due to its stators.

The stator is the green stuff

You see, the flagellum works by spinning. There’s a spinning rotor portion, and a stationary stator portion, within which the rotor spins. In P. aeruginosa there are two stators, and both must be present for biofilm attachment. Truthfully, though, we don’t know exactly what the stators do to facilitate this attachment–we just know that mutants that don’t have the stators (either one or both) are unable to attach to surfaces and form biofilms.

Extra cellular DNA (eDNA) is an interesting discovery–scientists knew that it existed, but thought it was simply an artifact of lysed cells in the EPS. However, in depth studies of P. aeruginosa revealed that biofilm formation was impossible without it, and the bacterium produced such large amounts of eDNA by creating releasing vesicles from the cells which house DNA.

The yellow is the eDNA, the green is living cells, and the red is dead cells

So far, eDNA is simply refereed to as an “adhesion factor.” This is science code for “we know it’s important, but we don’t know how or why.” Basically, scientists have found that when cells don’t make eDNA, or when bacteria are flooded with something that breaks down the eDNA, these cells cannot form biofilms. If the eDNA is present, biofilms are present. Pretty convincing argument that eDNA is required, but there’s little information as to what it does exactly.

One article mentioned that eDNA may react with N-acyl-glucosamine, a major component of cell walls in bacteria. This reaction would cause a a bond to form between the eDNA and the cell walls, which would cause the cells to stick together. This may be the mechanism by which eDNA causes biofilm formation–flagella and type IV pilli are used to attach to a solid surface, while eDNA is used for cell to cell attachment. I wonder then if biofilms that are not attached to a solid surface (although some purists don’t consider these flocs biofilms at all) have a disproportionately high amount of eDNA? This is what’s neat about science…there’s so much to find out!

During this stage of initial attachment, some cells attach to the substrate and some don’t.

2. Irreversible attachment

This stage is characterized by most cells being attached, and the community differentiating into two parts: parts of the new community that are motile, and parts that are immotile. This seems to be a function of the nutrient availability of the environment where the bacteria are forming a biofilm. If there’s plenty of glucose in the environment (which P. aeruginosa uses as a carbon source), then part of the bacterial cells become immediately nonmotile, while another part are motile.

At this point, the Las quorum sensing system became active (that is the subject of the next blog, so I’ll let you wait for an explanation).

The nonmotile cells form microcolonies, which are used as “stalks” for mushroom-shaped structures. The motile bacteria climb up the stalks and form the “caps.”

Mushroom-shaped colonies formed from a bunch of motile and nonmotile cells

If citrate is used as a carbon source, however, the cells are all motile to begin with, and none of them stop to form these stalks. The resulting biofilm is flat.

The top ones have the mushroom shapes, while the bottom ones are flat

Man, phenotypic variation due to differences in nutrient availability! How much more complex can we get?!?

During this time, the extracellular polymeric substance is produced. The EPS is involved in attachment (naturally), interactions between subpopulations and therefore cell-t0-cell intercommunications, tolerance, and exchange of genes. As I said above, the matrix is made of polysaccharides, lipids, proteins and eDNA. We know the most about the polysaccharides, proteins and eDNA (it only has recently be discovered that lipids are more prevalent than we thought…that’s always how it goes, isn’t it?). The exact make up of this matrix is, once again, dependent upon environmental conditions. That makes sense, doesn’t it? The armor you wear, the communication you use, and the way you attach to things is always going to be dependent upon what is going on around you.

These different environmental conditions are sensed and regulated by a series of kinase/response regulators called LadS, RetS, and GacS.

Oh dear, new terms. Ok, what the heck are kinase/response regulators?

Let’s start with a kinase. Notice that -ase suffix on the word? That means it’s an enzyme. This particular enzyme is responsible for transferring phosphate groups from high-energy donor molecules (such as ATP) to some sort of substrate.

When a phosphate group is added to another molecule or substrate, that substrate changes (duh…it’s got something added to it!). That change can change the shape of the molecule, opening up some receptor site that was closed before. Or it can allow the molecule to react with a new substrate. Whatever happens, the phosphorilation (addition of a phosphate group) causes a change in the substrate which starts a cascade of reactions within a cell.

It’s a neat system, actually…since cells don’t want reactions happening all the time, they can regulate them by requiring a phosphate group inorder to make a substance reactive. That phosphate group won’t be added with out kinase, and that kinase won’t even be around until the right time. Regulation at it’s finest!

Ok, now we know what kinase is, what about response regulators?

Response regulators are exactly what they sound like–proteins that regulate a response, usually the transcription/translation of a gene. They work with kinases by accepting the phosphate groups.

So, a kinase is usually in contact with the outside of the cell somehow. When it gets the signal it’s looking for, it takes a phosphate group and attaches it to a response regulator. The response regulator changes shape and becomes active, when then causes something in the cell to happen.

The kinase/response regulators involved in matrix production in biofilms are LadS, RetS and GacS. These three things are membrane associated proteins (proteins that span the membrane) and therefore search the environment for signals.

What do the proteins search for? We don’t know. But it’s something, and when they find that special something it triggers the histadine kinase to phosphorelate the response regulators. In turn, the response regulators turn on groups of genes which do all manner of things, including producing the matrix.

Once the matrix is in place, the cells are immobile and go on living as a community.

This formation of stalks and caps is characteristic of

3. Maturation stage 1

At this point, the layers of cells become greater than 10 micrometers thick.

The formation of mushroom caps involves the presence of some of the same things as initial attachment: eDNA, flagella, and type IV pili. The type IV pili may bind to the eDNA, while the flagellum allows the cell to get to its required place on the stalk.

During this stage, a second quorum-sensing system is switched on: the Rhl system.

This differentiation continues on until the thickness of the biofilm reaches a maximum of 100 micrometers, which introduces:

4. Maturation 2

This stage is characterized by the cell layers at their thickest points, the cells are nonmotile, and most of the cells are differentiated. At this point, the biofilm is at its most mature, and involves water channels, a highly organized system of cell colonies, and the ability to share genes among individual cells.

5. Dispersal

After several days of maturation, cells at the center of many of these clusters become motile and begin to disperse into the surrounding liquid.

Of course, the problem with attempting to characterize stages of development is that a mature biofilm may exhibit all 5 stages of development at any given time.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell. Biofilms are becoming more and more important in all manner of things, from medicine to engineering. I’m betting that this is the direction that microbiology will go in the future (and is probably why I need to know everything I can about the glory that is biofilm).

–Adrienne

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