Indiana Statesman For ISU students. About ISU students. By ISU students.
Friday, Feb. 26, 2016
Volume 123, Issue 60
State researcher unlocks genetic secrets to birds’ behavior, evolution Libby Roerig
ISU Communications and Marketing
Nearly 30 years of fieldwork coupled with cutting-edge technology has yielded important genetics insight recently published by the academic journal Current Biology and reviewed in Science Magazine. For Elaina Tuttle, it’s like winning an Oscar. “I think of all the researchers throughout the years, all the field assistants and graduate assistants who have been collaborators. It’s nice because even though they may not be in authorship, a little part of them is in there,” said Tuttle, professor of biology and associate dean of graduate programs at Indiana State University. “I think about my first years, not knowing what we’re doing, and now I think about the well-oiled machine we are with the white-throated sparrow project.” Tuttle and fellow State biology Professor Rusty Gonser have led 27 years’ research into white-throated sparrows at Cranberry Lake in New York. Their efforts have led to greater understanding of the birds’ supergene, its apparent degradation and the species’ evolution. The white-throated sparrow has two morphs — tan and white — that differ in color and behavior because of a chromosomal inversion. “There’s this large chunk of chromosome two that is rotated. It acts like a supergene and prevents any sort of recombination. It links those genes so there are no changes in them, generation after generation after generation,” Tuttle said. With these supergenes, the good traits are passed on together to offspring and never unlinked. “If you’re really aggressive and it’s good to be aggressive with your bright color, that’s always linked together and passed on together,” she said. “It prevents the breakup of good combinations. But it can also harbor bad combinations.” By sequencing the genome, Tuttle and the team of researchers — including Sycamore graduate students Marisa Korody and Adam Betuel — have identified more than 1,000 genes and where they are located. “What we find is that in the white morph, (the supergene is) degrading,” she said. “Not only is the white supergene degrading, but it’s dragging the tan supergene along with it. It’s called purifying selection — it’s getting rid of all those bad combinations. You’re going to be left with only the good combinations.” The findings have important parallels to human sex genes. “So, kind of like the X and the Y sex chromosomes in humans, the X chromosome is really large, and the Y chromosome is really tiny. They think it was (once equal),” she said. They also unlocked key components to the birds’ evolution — the white morph is newer, and the tan morph is the ancestral form.
indianastatesman.com
Board fires Missouri professor Koran Addo
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)
The University of Missouri Board of Curators has fired embattled professor Melissa Click. Click was caught on camera
in November calling for “muscle” while blocking student journalists from covering a campus demonstration. A second video surfaced this month showing Click cursing at a police offi-
cer during the University of Missouri-Columbia’s homecoming parade. Later, more than 100 Republican lawmakers in the Missouri Legislature sent a letter to the university calling on the administra-
tion to fire Click. Interim Chancellor Hank Foley said Sunday that Click’s conduct was “appalling” and that he was angry and disappointed at her “pattern of misconduct.” The board voted 4-2 in
favor of termination during a closed session in Kansas City, with Pamela Quigg Henrickson and John R. Phillips voting no. ©2016 St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Tre Redeemar | Indiana Statesman
Top: Brennan Hadley, junior, athletic training (with cheer team) Bottom Right: Hannah Hendricks, junior, art and Ariel Sledge, junior, recreation therapy (with Alpha Chi Omega).
How ‘bout Hoopla
Beyond Paris, questionable efforts to combat climate change Markos Kounalakis
The Sacramento Bee (TNS)
Germany has long been a leading advocate for confronting and ameliorating climate change. But actions speak louder than words — or signatures on an international accord. The recent Volkswagen scandal is only the latest case of climate policy hypocrisy. Meeting in Paris last December, countries around the globe finally recognized the generally accepted scientific eviSEE BIRDS, PAGE 2 dence that climate change
is real. They also accepted some responsibility to do something about it. To much fanfare, 195 countries, including Germany and the United States, signed the Paris agreement pledging to hit targets to drop emissions, cut carbon and keep our aging earth from experiencing too many hot flashes and cold extremities. Developed democratic countries, pushed by their citizens, led the charge for a comprehensive agreement to atone for past polluting and to prevent developing states from repeating their own sins.
Canada, England, France — they all chimed in and tried to convince, coerce and cajole those developing countries to be energy ascetics. That was a tough sell. The developing world now wants its turn to crank out the carbon and catch up to the already rich, gasburning and global-warming recidivists. Looking beyond the narratives of the industrialized world’s planned sacrifice, however, some of the stories seem a little less noble or credible. France, for example, is fine with less fossil fuel because it depends most-
ly on nuclear power for progress: Up to 78 percent of its electrical needs are met by the near zerocarbon emitting nuclear plants. Future plans to cut its dependency on nuclear plants while also cutting carbon emissions will certainly be a challenge. Germany boasts that it is able to reduce the amount of carbon it emits and shut down its nuclear power plants because it has developed enough alternative wind and solar power to provide clean and nearly free energy for all. In fact, German statistics recently peaked
when satisfying more than 50 percent of its electricity demand through solar power, and nearly 80 percent through all renewable resources. In each case of selective carbon curtailment, it is expected that a nation seeks its self-interest while also acting simultaneously to protect its competitive advantages. But Germany recently went one step further by publicly advocating an anti-polluting stance, while at the same time a dominant corporation powering the Ger-
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