Museum’s REU Symposium Spotlights Student Summer Biology Research

Monday, August 16 9:02 am

Nearly 80% of interns from the first 10 years of the Museum’s REU program in biology have gone on to graduate school. Of those, 31% are now working in academia, and 25% hold non-faculty research positions. © AMNH/D. Finnin

The gene flow patterns of Amazonian birds, the diversity of bat teeth, mislabeled species at the local market: these were just a few of the topics presented at the 22nd Annual Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) biological sciences symposium held in the Museum’s Linder Theater earlier this month.

The symposium marked the conclusion of the 2010 REU program, a National Science Foundation-funded internship that offers college students the opportunity to work side by side with Museum scientists on research projects in the biological or physical sciences. Nearly 80% of interns from the first 10 years of the REU program in biology have gone on to graduate school and, within this group, 31% are now working in academia and 25% hold non-faculty research positions.

“This program is very important, not only because these undergraduates are generating cutting-edge research, but also for me, because it’s how I got started as a professor,” said Museum Curator Mark Siddall of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, who has overseen the REU biology program since 2001, during opening remarks at the symposium.

This summer’s eight REU projects in biology spanned species, continents, and methodologies.

Isabella Akker, a student at Stanford University who worked with Joel Cracraft, curator-in-charge of the Museum’s Department of Ornithology, spent the summer sequencing and analyzing the DNA of the Blue-Crowned Manakin—a species of bird found in the Amazonian rainforest—that had been sampled from different geographic locations in South America.

Another REU intern, Berenice Villegas of Columbia University, looked into a phenomenon closer to home. Villegas worked with George Amato, director of the Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics, to conduct a study that examined the mislabeling of endangered species—including turtle, alligator, and fish meat—sold illegally in New York City markets. Using a tool known as DNA barcoding—or analyzing a fragment of a gene to identify a particular species—Villegas found many cases of mislabeling as well as instances of threatened or near-threatened species for sale.

Villegas, an environmental biology major, said that conducting research with Museum scientists was an invaluable experience. “It was one of the best summers I’ve ever had,” she said of participating in the REU program.

Museum scientists were equally enthusiastic about working with young researchers. John Flynn, dean of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History, emphasized the value of the REU program in unscheduled remarks at the symposium’s conclusion.

“I was incredibly struck by the tenor of conversation and questioning—a testament to your excellent work as an integral part of creating a new generation of scientists,” said Flynn.

For more information about Research Experiences for Undergraduates at the Museum, please visit the Fellowships and Opportunities section on the Richard Gilder Graduate Schoolwebsite.

New Research Offers Hope for A Rapidly Disappearing Plant

Tuesday, July 27 11:56 am

Cycads — plants with a 300-million-year-old evolutionary history — have suffered staggering declines in recent years.  One species, Cycas micronesica, which is endemic to Guam and other islands, has lost over 90 percent of its population within the a period of four years due to invasive species and habitat loss. But new research from a team that includes Museum scientists recently found that genetic diversity among these cycads offers hope for future conservation efforts.

The team, which includes Museum researcher Angélica Cibrían-Jaramillo, sampled this species on Guam and analyzed their genetic relationships. The results showed that local populations have some genetic diversity and moderate genetic variation with some inbreeding, which is what would be expected in longer-lived plants with similar patterns of seed dispersal.

The research also shows that cycads in the south, where smaller Cycas micronesica seeds float long distances along rivers unhampered by dense forests, are more genetically diverse than cycad populations in the north.

Researchers expect that these findings will provide tools for conservation efforts.

“We hope these results from the plant perspective will fit into the management of invasive insects in general, which is one of the most important drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide and very costly economically,” says Museum Curator Rob DeSalle, who conducts research in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics.

Cibrián-Jaramillo, who is also a researcher at The New York Botanical Garden, and DeSalle collaborated with Thomas Marley of the University of Guam, Aidan Daley of the Museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, and Eric Brenner of New York University.

For more information, see the Museum’s press release.

Museum Links Evolutionary Biology and Human Health

Wednesday, June 09 6:22 pm

What does Darwin have to do with human disease? Quite a lot, it turns out, as the lessons of evolution, enhanced by sophisticated technologies such as gene sequencing, are being used to tease out the secrets of organisms that spread death and disability around the globe.

The American Museum of Natural History has taken a leading role in these efforts through ongoing collaborations between its evolutionary biologists and medical researchers to understand various threats to human health, from flu pandemics to malaria to the ravages of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

This work was highlighted at a Science Breakfast panel discussion held last week at the Museum before an audience of medical and science writers.

Listen to the Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (1 hr 09 mins, 64 MB)

The panel included three curators from the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology who work under the auspices of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. Rob DeSalle, who moderated, Mark Siddall, and Ward Wheeler were joined by three medical scientists: New York University School of Medicine’s Jane Carlton, Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Robert Burk, and Columbia University’s Paul Planet.

Museum scientists help medical researchers pin down the origin, evolution, and diversity of pathogens, and, perhaps most important, how they have adapted to us and we to them.

“Every doctor, whether they know it or not, is a natural historian,” said Planet, who studies infectious diseases in children and is also a research associate at the Museum.

Another key component of collaboration is the development of new tools to make sense of masses of raw data. Case in point: the Supramap, displayed by Wheeler, a powerful new computer application which allows researchers and public health officials to track the spread and mutation of a disease over time and place.

Of course, the ultimate goal of such supercomputing, genome-sequencing, and the building of evolutionary trees is to better predict pandemic outbreaks and to find better treatments, even cures.

Said Burk, who has worked with DeSalle on the molecular phylogeny of the human papillomavirus, which is linked to cervical cancer, for a decade:  ”From the medical perspective, I think it’s very clear that the better we understand the pathogenesis of any disease, the better we are able to intervene.”

Some Tunas Harbor More Mercury According to New Museum Research

Wednesday, April 21 12:09 pm

New research showing that that mercury levels are higher in some species of tuna could help consumers minimize their consumption of the silvery metal in their sushi and provide a powerful new tool for regulatory organizations. The new research—combining DNA barcoding at the Museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics with analysis of mercury content at Rutgers University—is published in Biology Letters and shows surprisingly that tuna sushi purchased in supermarkets might be healthier than that from restaurants. The sushi made for supermarkets tends to be yellowfin tuna.

“We found that mercury levels are linked to specific species,” says Jacob Lowenstein, a graduate student affiliated with the Museum. “So far, the U.S. does not require restaurants and merchants to clarify what species they are selling or trading, but species names and clearer labeling would allow consumers to exercise greater control over the level of mercury they imbibe.”

Weighing a freshly caught yellowfin tuna enroute to Japan at Suisan fish market in Hilo, Hawaii. Credit: Joanna Burger

A plate of sushi with several pieces of tuna in the center (dark red is akami; light pink is toro). Credit: Joanna Burger

After Darwin at AMNH: Rob DeSalle

Monday, December 14 10:19 am

Curator Rob DeSalle Explains the Limitations of Genetic Ancestry Tests

This year, scientists at the American Museum of Natural History are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species with a collection of vignettes describing expeditions and ideas with links to Darwin’s seminal work.

An annotated academic poster from a conference held at AMNH in 1932 shows the inheritance of two genetic sequences commonly used in ancestry testing. On top of Charles Darwin’s pedigree, DeSalle plotted mitochondrial DNA in red and Y-chromosome in blue. Darwin is outlined by a blue square. - AMNH

When Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University professor and host of the PBS series African American Lives, learned that his Y-chromosome—a gene popularly used to trace male ancestry—“goes back to Europe,” he joked that he was having an identity crisis. And in his best-selling book The Seven Daughters of Eve geneticist Brian Sykes suggests that 95% of all Europeans are descended from just seven Stone Age women. He used mitochondrial DNA, inherited directly from mothers and employed by companies for ancestry testing of the maternal ancestry, for this work.

These are dramatic moments, but they are based in part on misleading assumptions, according to geneticists like Rob DeSalle, Curator in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the Museum. “Ancestry testing is pushed as simple and straight-forward,” he says. “But it is not. Often the verbal history passed down in families is more accurate than ancestry DNA testing done now.”

DeSalle, along with Museum colleague Ian Tattersall, turned to the family history of the most famous of evolutionary thinkers to illustrate their point. By simply mapping basic inheritance onto Charles Darwin’s pedigree, it is easy to see how quickly a specific Y-chromosome or sequence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can be lost in a lineage. Darwin’s Y-chromosome, for example, is probably found in only two of his living descendents. Only three of his four sons reproduced and one of these sons only had daughters. Ultimately, the number of male descendents of Darwin’s two sons who had male offspring dwindled to a very small number. There are many direct male descendents of Charles Darwin living today, but most of them do not have his Y chromosome. Read more »