Faulkner and Margulis probe mystery of Sahara Desert Microbialites from Meski Plateau

Sean Faulkner, and his advisor, Lynn Margulis, recently returned from a trip to Erfoud, Morocco, where they visited the field site of their ongoing research. Faulkner's graduate research, tentatively titled Sahara Desert Microbialites from the base of the Meski Plateau, Erfoud, Morocco, focuses on microbialites found on the northwestern edge of the Sahara Desert near Erfoud, Morocco. Microbialites are rocks, usually sedimentary, that are formed as a function of direct or indirect microbial metabolic activity. The field work was carried out by a team that included Faulkner, Margulis, a field guide, and collaborator Mohammed Et-Touhami, professor of geology at the Universite Mohammed Premier Oujda. After several days in and around the field, Faulkner and Margulis traveled to Barcelona, Spain, where they met CosmoCaixa Museum of Science director Jorge Wagensberg to discuss plans to redesign the exhibit where the rocks are displayed.

Faulkner also recently visited the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to continue work with professors Peter Mozley and Penny Boston, both of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science. This is an ongoing collaboration that has spanned over two years focusing on calcite-cemented sand concretions and their potential biogenic genesis. Dr. Mozley works on similar structures from the Rio Grande Rift Valley system, and Dr. Boston works with cave extremophiles and potential biosignatures from rocks on the Martian surface. Faulkner hopes to be able to work with Drs. Mozley and Boston this summer conducting experimental geomicrobiological work as part of the NASA Planetary Biology Internship.

Celeste Asikainen, investigates discovery of metal-rich nodules from Second and Third Connecticut Lakes, New Hampshire

Sub-aqueous metal-rich nodules were discovered in two of the headwater lakes of the Connecticut river Second Connecticut Lake, Pittsburg, New Hampshire in 2002 by Sean Werle during a diving expedition to film an underwater video documentary on the Idlewilde logging camp located here from 1870-1915 (Image 1 and 2). In a later diving expedition (2005) another field of nodules was discovered in Third Connecticut Lake. These metal-rich sedimentary deposits are known as ferromanganese nodules for their abundance of iron and manganese, the deposits can also contain other elements such as copper, nickel and cobalt (Image 3, 4, 5 and 6).  Understanding the environmental conditions that aid in the creation of the structures is the subject of Celeste Asikainen's dissertation work, a doctoral student of Lynn Margulis in the department of geosciences, UMass-Amherst. This research may help scientists know the geochemical and environmental conditions required to support the growth of these structures.

Michael Dolan receives editorial appointments

Adjunct professor Michael F. Dolan has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal Symbiosis to serve in the area of symbiotic microbiota of termites and other invertebrates. He has also been appointed to the editorial board of Landes Biosciences’ new on-line only journal, Communicative and Integrative Biology to serve in the area of biosemiotics, symbiosis, cognition and evolution. This new journal will publish its first issue in the summer 2008.

Spring 2008 Space Grant fellowships announced

Seven UMASS students have been awarded fellowships for spring 2008 semester research from the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, according to Michael F. Dolan, UMASS Representative on the Consortium, who arranged for the fellowships. The students are Scott Frazee, Stephen Hart, Robert Hyldahl, Jeffrey Little, Bryan Thibodeau, Brad Timm and Felipe Vilas-Boas. Undergraduate students receive a $1,250 stipend while graduate students receive one for $1,500.

“There is a noticeable decline in the number of awards this year because of a new rule from NASA Headquarters that Space Grant funds could only be disbursed to US citizens,” Dolan said.

“We had previously funded international students,” he said, “and had eighteen fellowships last spring.”

UMASS Amherst starts history of protistology collection

The Special Collections department of the W.E.B. DuBois Library at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst has created a program to collect the personal papers of protistologists.

Modeled on the Bentley Glass collection of geneticists’ papers at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, the UMASS collection aims to be the premiere repository of the historical record of protozoology and protistology of the 20th century.  The program will be organized by Special Collections head Dr. Robert Cox, who came to UMASS from the American Philosophical Society, and Prof. Michael Dolan of the UMASS Geosciences Department.

The organizers would like to collect correspondence, notebooks, field notes, manuscripts, reports as well as photographs, micrographs, films and videos from investigators in the field of protistology. Also sought are microscope slide specimens, TEM blocks and other research collection materials. These specimens will be given to a suitable museum or museums to be determined. All donations will be tax-deductible. The first donation to the collection is the papers of Prof. John A. Kloetzel of the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

To learn more about the collection program, please contact Michael Dolan at 413-545-3244 or mdolan@geo.umass.edu.

(reprinted from The Stentor, member publication of the International Society of Protistologists)

Hutner papers added to UMASS collection

Over 20 years of professional correspondence from one of the leading protist biochemists of the 20th century have been donated to the UMASS Amherst History of Protistology collection at the W.E.B. Dubois Library, collection recruiter Michael F. Dolan has announced. The Seymour Hutner papers consist of 7.5 linear feet of incoming and outgoing correspondence from the early 1970s to 1995 during Hutner’s tenure as director of the Haskins Laboratories at Pace University in New York City.

“The Haskins Labs was a leading center of protozoological research in New York,” said Dolan, “Many of the City’s most famous protozoologists have passed through its doors and worked with Hutner and his colleagues.

Hutner was a pioneer in the development of defined medium for growing protozoa and developed the use of Euglena as a bioindicator for the presence of minute quantities of vitamin B12.

Antipa library donated to UMASS

Prof. Greg Antipa of San Francisco State University has donated his library of protozoological books and journals to UMASS as part of the university’s Special Collection on the History of Protistology, collection recruiter Michael F. Dolan has announced.

“We are very happy that we can amend UMASS’ extensive collection of protistological literature with Greg Antipa’s library,” said Dolan.

Antipa is an expert on the ciliate cytoskeleton, and has pledged to add his research collection of electron micrographs to the DuBois Library collection as they become available, Dolan said.

Ciliate geneticist Bleyman donates papers to UMASS collection

Prof. Lea Bleyman of Baruch College in New York City has donated her research notebooks, manuscripts and correspondence to the UMASS History of Protistology collection, according to Michael F. Dolan, who is recruiting material for the collection.  Bleyman taught genetics at Baruch College, and specialized in the genetics of Paramecium and other ciliates. She was a student of Tracy Sonneborn of Indiana University, the twentieth century’s leading Paramecium geneticist.

“In addition to her own work on Paramecium, Prof. Bleyman’s papers include her notebooks from the Sonneborn lab, and her reports from the early ciliate genetics meetings,” Dolan said.

Michael Dolan, PhD is elected secretary of protistologists’ society

Adjunct professor Michael F. Dolan has been elected secretary of the International Society of Protistologists (ISOP) for the period 2007 – 2010. He is instituting a program to recruit new members to the society, particularly new student members, by distributing free copies of the Society’s Illustrated Guide to the Protozoa, 2nd ed. and its Protocols of Protozoology to new members. Professional researchers and students who would like to know more about the society and how they can join can contact him at mdolan@geo.umass.edu or can visit the society’s web page at http://www.uga.edu/protozoa/

Luminous Fish weaves together memoir and stories of science from the inside—its thrills, disappointments and triumphs. A largely fictional account, it draws on Margulis’ decades of experience to portray the poor judgement, exhaustion, and life-threatening dedication of real scientists—their emotional preoccupations, sexual distractions, and zeal for scientific investigation. The arcane, exhilarating and routine world of research emerges from the shadows of its passive narrative into the sunlight of the personal voice of those who attempt to wrench secrets directly from nature. All of us who struggle to balance family, professional and social commitments with intellectual quests will be intrigued by the humanity of these tales.

Developmental Biology Films Project begins at Margulis Lab

A 40-year effort by Prof. Margulis to rescue as many as 80 Developmental Biology Films funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) finally bore fruit this year as the University of Massachusetts Amherst signed an agreement that will rescue, preserve and distribute these national treasures for science education.  Texas filmmaker, Terrance Malick, and his special assistant, Nick Gonda, digital restoration and transfer of these 16mm films is being donated by Post Logic Studios in New York.  The Margulis Lab also wants to thank  Paul Beck of Emerson College and the New England Chapter of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and Robert Culver of Massdevelopment for their invaluable participation in this effort.

HOW CANCER SPREADS

The Yale Alumni Magazine and the January 2009 issue of Scientific American have interesting articles on the work of John Pawelek, a senior research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine, who studies melanoma cells. He credits Lynn Margulis with a eureka moment about the nature of metastasis, the spread of cancer throughout the body. It was Margulis writings on the ability of eukaryotic cells to fuse into hybrids that led to Pawelek to his discovery.

Professor Lynn Margulis honored by Linnean Society of London with 2008 Darwin-Wallace Medal

The Darwin-Wallace Medals are awarded at 50-year intervals since 1858 to mark the anniversary of the reading of the joint Darwin-Wallace paper “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection”.  Medalists are outstanding scientists who have made significant advances in the study of natural history and evolution.

Prof. Margulis joins a distinguished recipients that include among others Alfred Russel Wallace and Ernst Haeckel in 1908; J.B.S. Haldane, Ernst Mayer, Julian Huxley, and G. Gaylord Simpson in 1958.  This year’s recipeints included among others Stephen Jay Gould FRS and John Maynard Smith FRS, FLS. 

Two sides of the Darwin-Wallace Medal are shown on the cover of the Linnean Society of London’s award ceremony program.

Margulis and friends viewed  Wm Smith’s “map that changed the world” during a visit to The Geographical Society in London.(Left to right) Frank Ryan MD (author), Prof. Lynn Margulis, Prof. John Allen (Queen Mary University of London), Prof. Martin Brasier (Oxford), Andrew Richford (publisher), Robert Sternberg (Imperial College London).

Prof. Lynn Margulis FLS (center) with Sir Crispin Tickell FLS, FRS (left),  former United Kingdom Ambassador to the United Nations, former United Kingdom Ambassador to Mexico, and former Warden Green College Oxford and Oxford University Professor of Paleontology Martin Brasier (right). The trio celebrates her Darwin-Walace Medal  and the publication of Brasier’s new book “Darwin’s Lost World” at the Linnean Society of London reception.

2008 Darwin-Wallace Medalists pose for a photograph at the end of the award ceremony. Pictured from left to right: Prof. Joseph Felsenstein, Julian Maynard-Smith accepting for his father John Maynard Smith FRS, FLS, Prof. Nicholas Barton FRS, Prof. Mohamed Noor, Prof. Linda Partridge FRS, Prof. Mark Chase FRS, FLS, Prof. Rosemary Grant FRS, Prof. Peter Grant, FRS, FLS, Prof. Lynn Margulis FLS, Prof. H. Allen Orr, Professor James Mallet FLS, Prof. Bryan Clarke FRS, FLS and Prof. David Cutler FLS, President of the Linnean Society of London. The medal was also awarded posthumously to Prof Stephen Jay Gould.

LISTEN to the Margulis vs. Dawkins debate on “The Origin of Evolutionary Novelty - a Homage to Charles Darwin”. Held at Balliol College, Oxford University, May 8, 2009.  Load the following URL into your browser and hit return to download

ftp://eclogite.geo.umass.edu/pub/gaia/Homage_to_Darwin_part1.mp3

ftp://eclogite.geo.umass.edu/pub/gaia/Homage_to_Darwin_part2.mp3

Lynn Margulis shows Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a picture of Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky, author of the book  “Symbiogenesis: The New Principle of Evolution“ written in 1924. The book has just been translated from Russian and edited by Victor Fet, Marshall University, West Virginia.

Download Table of Contents.pdf   Publication Announcement

Updated 11/03/2009

George L. Waldbott Papers in DuBois Library

   The professional papers of Dr. George L. Waldbott of Michigan, one of the most important grassroots/professional activists in the long struggle to end water fluoridation, have been deposited in the Special Collections Department of the W.E.B. DuBois Library at UMASS Amherst, Dr. Michael F. Dolan, who is helping to organize the collection, announced today.

   The Waldbott papers were in a larger collection obtained from the family of the late Texas-activist Martha Bevis, and represent the first collection in the DuBois Library's new Special Collection on the history of opposition to water fluoridation, part of the Library's emphasis on the history of protest movements.

   Waldbott was a prolific writer of such books as A Struggle With Titans (1965) and Fluoridation: The Great Dilemma. The catalog entry for his collection can be found at http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?p=924

Professor Lynn Marulis spoke at the “Charles Darwin and modern biology” conference in St. Petersburg, Russia on September 23, 2009. The conference was sponsored by the Saint-Petersburg Branch of the Institute of the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Science. The conference was held to celebrate the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth.

Professor Margulis, will be delivered a paper entitled, Symbiogenesis:Source of evolutionary novelty.  She also introduced English translation of Russian botanist Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky’s (1890-1957) 1924 book Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution by Harvard University Press.

Sputnik, 4 October 1957

On Wednesday July 15th, BBC Radio 4 transmitted “A Life With Microbes” , featuring the work of Professor Margulis. The producer, Paul Evans, interviewed Professor Margulis at the Eastman House, Balliol College, Oxford, UK.  The program on BBC Radio 4 can be listened to online at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lk12y

LISTEN to the Margulis vs. Dawkins debate on “The Origin of Evolutionary Novelty - a Homage to Charles Darwin”. Held at Oxford University, May 8, 2009.  Load the following URL into your browser and hit return to download

ftp://eclogite.geo.umass.edu/pub/gaia/Homage_to_Darwin_part1.mp3

ftp://eclogite.geo.umass.edu/pub/gaia/Homage_to_Darwin_part2.mp3

Margulis in Russia

Margulis in United Kingdom

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS to publish first English translation of Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky’s 1924 masterpiece  “Symbiogenesis: The New Principle of Evolution“

The Margulis Lab is delighted to announce that Harvard University Press will publish Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution (1924) by the great Russian botanist Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky (1890-1957). The book, acquired by editor-in-chief Michael Fisher, will be available, we hope, by spring 2010. The manuscript was translated by bibliophile Victor Fet, Professor of Biology at Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. Fet, an expert on scorpions and their mitochondrial DNA, a poet and writer in both languages, is the perfect translator to have sensitively brought this important, short and entirely accessible scientific gem into English. Conversant with modern zoology, genetics, cell biology and born in Russia as a son of a computer scientist, Fet's early education was in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Kozo-Polyansky first recognized the profound difference between prokaryotes (elements of life) and eukaryotes (symbionts composed of these elements) 3 years before Edouard Chatton coined the terms "procariotíque" and "eucariotíque". The word cell from the late 19th through most of the 20th century meant only "nucleated cell" (=eukaryotic cell); prokaryotes had many names including bacillus, bacterium, bioblast, biococcus, coccus, cyanophyte, cytode, flagellated cytode, micrococcus, moneran and nepheloid that depended on context.

 

Kozo-Polyansky's stunning contribution, the one that distinguishes him from his great Russian predecessors at the "school of symbiogeneticists" such as K.S. Merezhkovsky (1855-1921), A.S. Famintzyn (1835-1918) and others who wrote and/or were translated into other languages was his enlighted approach to Charles Darwin's work. Kozo-Polyansky insisted that the Russians were correct: symbiogenesis is the major source of evolutionary novelty – but, he insisted, Darwin's "descent with modification" requires his "natural selection" for the maintenance and perpetuation of all heritable change. No original work of Boris Mikhailovich has ever been published in English, German or French.  He was a native of the city of Voronezh in "Black-earth" Russia, an agricultural region where today the botanical garden is named the Kozo-Polyansky Botanical Garden. It is appropriate that the book's introduction is by the world renowned biophilic Director of the