URI to hold lecture on genetics role
in diversity of life on earth
KINGSTON, R.I. -- January 26, 2000 -- Mitchell Lloyd Sogin, director
of the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Molecular Evolution at the Woods Hole
Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. will give a public
lecture on the origin and early evolution of the nucleated cell based on
clues from its genes.
Sogin's talk on "Broken Limbs and Net-like Structures in the Tree
of Life" will be in Room 215 of the Morrill Life Science Building on
URI's Kingston Campus on Feb. 7 at noon. The lecture is free and open to
the public. Anyone curious about the vast diversity of life on earth, how
such diversity arose, how gene sequencing can be used to investigate these
issues, and those interested in protecting the vast storehouse of genetic
data stored in microorganisms will be especially interested in this presentation.
Sogin is the author of a new proposal for the early evolution of eukaryotic
organisms. Typically, the origin and evolution of eukaryotic cells has been
found from evidence in the fossil record and in the phenotypic features
of organisms living today. Sogin has pioneered the use of genetic information
coded in the "blueprints of life" (the base sequences of nucleic
acids such as ribosomal RNA's) to seek out the lineages that relate diverse
living organisms to one another through their common ancestry. Discoveries
in his laboratory contradict the current opinions that divides eukaryotic
organisms into a few discrete groups, and have led to his proposal that
eukaryotes should be viewed as a continuation of diverging lineages.
Sogin is also director of the Giardia lamblia Genome Project,
funded by the National institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the
National Institute of Health, the LI-COR Biotechnology Division and the
G. Unger Vetlsen Foundation.
The lecture is sponsored by the URI Honors Program and Visiting Scholars
Committee, and the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Molecular
Genetics.
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For More Information: Jan Sawyer, 401-874-2116
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