Michael Akam and the rise of evolutionary developmental biology

Michael Akam has been awarded the 2007 Kowalevsky medal for his many research accomplishments in the area of evolutionary developmental biology. We highlight three tributaries of Michael’s contribution to evolutionary developmental biology. First, he has made major contributions to our understanding of development of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Second, he has maintained a consistent focus on several key problems in evolutionary developmental biology, including the evolving role of Hox genes in arthropods and, more recently, the evolution of segmentation mechanisms. Third, Michael has written a series of influential reviews that have integrated progress in developmental biology into an evolutionary perspective. Michael has also made a large impact on the field through his effective mentorship style, his selfless promotion of younger colleagues, and his leadership of the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge and the European community of evolutionary developmental biologist.     

Jonathon Howard.

Jonathon 'Joe' Howard (Fig. 1) is Group Leader and Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics; he and his research group moved to Dresden, Germany, in July 2001. Howard received his PhD in neurobiology in 1983 from the Australian National University in Canberra. He did postdoctoral research there and also at the University of Bristol, UK, and at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1989, he joined the faculty at the University of Washington. His book "Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton" was published earlier this year. [interview by Mari N. Jensen]     

From the laboratory to the patient and back--an interview with Marc Mareel. Interview by Marc E. Bracke

The career of Marc Mareel is a synthesis of scientific research and clinical activity. During his medical studies, he already made his first enthusiastic steps in research via experimental work on avian developmental biology. Later, during his training as a radiotherapist, he founded his own laboratory for experimental cancer research. There he built up his international reputation as a pioneer in invasion research. Although invasion is the hallmark of tumor malignancy, he also kept an open mind about invasion in non-cancer conditions, such as in placental behavior, developmental biology, immunology and parasitology. His contribution to our understanding of invasion mechanisms has been both technical and conceptual. A number of assays have been developed in his lab, such as the embryonic chick heart and collagen gel invasion models, that have been (and still are) useful for many other research teams. He also contributed to the discovery of a number of key elements in the process of invasion, such as the stromal influence (including its extracellular matrix) and the cadherin family of cell-cell adhesion molecules. Concerning metastasis formation, he developed the original concept that a number of interacting eco-systems are implicated, such as the primary tumor, regional lymph nodes, the bone marrow and the (pre)metastatic niches in distant organs. Since his retirement, Marc Mareel has continued to integrate clinical practice with research creativity. He favours the idea of translational research bringing the results of laboratory findings to medical applications, and exploiting the feedback to the laboratory. The team in the Laboratory of Experimental Cancer Research at Ghent University currently consists of about 25 collaborators, who continue to appreciate his inspiring ideas and suggestions.     

Pieter Nieuwkoop's contributions to the understanding of meso-endoderm induction and neural induction in chordate development

Pieter Nieuwkoop, who died September 18, 1996, at age 79 in Utrecht, The Netherlands, is remembered by developmental biologists for his numerous research contributions and integrative hypotheses over the past 50 years, especially in the areas of neural induction, meso-endoderm induction, and germ cell induction in chordates. Most of his experimentation was done on the embryos of amphibia, the preferred vertebrate embryo of the early years of the 20th century. One of his last publications contains a comparison of the experimental advantages and disadvantages of anuran and urodele amphibians (Nieuwkoop, 1996). The significance of his findings and interpretations for developmental biology can be estimated from the fact that researchers of many laboratories worldwide continue to work on the phenomena he first described and to extend the hypotheses he first formulated. The aim of this article is to review Nieuwkoop's main contributions and to cite the recent extensions by others.     

Rolf Bernander (1956–2014): pioneer of the archaeal cell cycle

On 19 January 2014 Rolf (‘Roffe’) Bernander passed away unexpectedly. Rolf was a dedicated scientist; his research aimed at unravelling the cell biology of the archaeal domain of life, especially cell cycle‐related questions, but he also made important contributions in other areas of microbiology. Rolf had a professor position in the Molecular Evolution programme at Uppsala University, Sweden for about 8 years, and in January 2013 he became chair professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner‐Gren Institute at Stockholm University in Sweden. Rolf was an exceptional colleague and will be deeply missed by his family and friends, and the colleagues and co‐workers that he leaves behind in the scientific community. He will be remembered for his endless enthusiasm for science, his analytical mind, and his quirky sense of humour.     

Stanislaw Smreczynskis legacy and the Department of Zoology of the Jagiellonian University of Krakow (Poland)

This article covers the origin and development of scientific interest in insect and amphibian developmental biology at the Department of Systematic Zoology and Zoogeography of the Jagiellonian University. The greater part of this historical account is devoted to Professor Stanislaw Smreczynski (1899-1975), the founding father of the Department, and comments on his biography and research achievements in the field of animal experimental embryology. A particular emphasis is on Smreczynski's contributions to contemporary understanding of early embryonic development of amphibians and insects as well as his expertise in Pleistocene and extant weevils (Curculionidae). A concise survey of developmental phenomena studied by some of Smreczynski's co-workers and followers is also presented, including the early embryogenesis of entognathans as well as germ cell determination and gonad formation in Drosophila virilis conducted by Jura; analysis of oogenesis in Collembola carried out by Krzysztofowicz; investigations of insects and tradigrades by Weglarska, and finally research into various aspects of ovary structure in diverse insect taxa by the Bilinski group.     

My perpetual cycle: from student to researcher to teacher to student ..

This contribution stems from the personal experience of the author regarding how he became acquainted with embryology and how he finally entered the field of developmental biology. It reports his feelings as a student of the Histology and Embryology course as it was taught in the late 1970s, and his present efforts in teaching developmental biology to university students. In the Developmental Biology course at Pisa University today, students are taught the tissue, molecular and genetic mechanisms that regulate development of several model systems. Drosophila is introduced at the beginning, because of the great knowledge that it has brought to the unraveling of the molecular aspects of development and because it allows several basic concepts to be introduced, and vertebrate systems follow. Other topics include the classic experiments on amphibian systems, which are explained in the light of recent molecular advances, as well as the genetically more versatile vertebrate systems such as the mouse.     

Stuart Schreiber

Stuart Schreiber is an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Morris Loeb Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. His chemical biology research, which uses small molecules derived from diversity-oriented synthesis, observational screens and information science, has uncovered principles that underlie information transfer and storage in cells. Harvard's ICCB and its affiliated, NCI-sponsored Initiative for Chemical Genetics and the NIGMS-sponsored Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development are facilitating his research.     

Q & A. [interview

George Oster is Professor of Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley. He received his B.S. at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. He began his career in biophysics as a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute under Aharon Katchalsky, where his research involved membrane biophysics and irreversible thermodynamics. His concern for environmental issues led him into population biology, which shaded into evolutionary biology and thence to developmental biology, cell biology and, most recently, protein motors and bacterial motility and pattern formation. His tools are mathematics, physics and computer simulation. He is currently a faculty member in the Departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the College of Natural Resources at Berkeley.     

Q & A. [interview

Joel Rosenbaum was born and grew up in Massena, New York state, on the St Lawrence River border with Ontario, Canada. He received his undergraduate and PhD degrees from Syracuse University, and a Masters Degree in high school biology teaching at St Lawrence University. His PhD work was done with the protozoologist, George Holz Jr, and his post doctoral research on cilia and flagella was at the University Of Chicago with Frank Child and Hewson Swift. He has been at Yale University for 37 years where he has taught Cell Biology. His research has been on the synthesis and assembly of the proteins of cilia and flagella, showing that the flagellar axoneme assembles at the distal tip and that detachment of the flagella upregulates the genes for flagellar proteins. More recently his group has shown that this tip assembly process is facilitated by a rapid kinesin and cytoplasmic dynein-mediated motility underneath the flagellar membrane called ‘intraflagellar transport’. He is a runner with more than 20 marathons under his belt.     

Common to both academia and industry: the challenge of discovery. An interview with Perry Molinoff

Perry Molinoff recognizes the distinctions between basic and applied science, between academic and industrial research, and between the preclinical and clinical realities of drug development. But he generally discusses these categories in fluid, practical terms, having throughout his career crossed the lines of distinction that have sometimes been rather heavily drawn among pharmacologists. As a third-year medical student at Harvard, he decided "to take a year off" to conduct laboratory research. After receiving his MD and pursuing further clinical and postdoctoral work, he enjoyed an academic career that included fourteen years as the A.N. Richards Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has just completed six years as Vice President of Neuroscience and Genitourinary Drug Discovery for Bristol-Myers Squibb and will soon return to teaching, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Yale University. Referring to himself as either pharmacologist or neuroscientist, depending on context, he has made fundamental discoveries in receptor biology, has overseen the discovery and development of drugs and their subsequent clinical trials, and has mentored a host of pharmacologists and neuroscientists who themselves have established careers in industry and academia. The pursuit of discovery as its own reward emerges as a theme that has marked his professional life (and is perhaps reflected also in the images displayed in his office of the Himalayan mountains, photographed by Molinoff himself from the Everest base camp last year).     

Eduard Strasburger

Eduard Strasburger Eduard Strasburger, director of the Institute of Botany and the Botanical Garden at the University of Bonn from 1881 to 1912, was one of the most admirable scientists in the field of plant biology, not just as the founder of modern plant cell biology but in addition as inspirator for sensory plant biology. He contributed to plant cell biology by discovering the discrete stages of karyokinesis and cytokinesis in algae and land plants, describing cytoplasmic streaming in different systems, and reporting on the growth of the pollen tube into the embryo sac and guidance of the tube by the synergides. Strasburger attracted attention to many biological phenomena which remain hot spots even in current plant cell biology research, e.g., mechanisms of cell plate formation, vesicle trafficking as a basis for most important developmental processes, structure and function of the plasmodesmata, and signaling related to fertilization. By his early industrial cooperation, internationality, integrating research profile and public teaching he fulfills even today's most admired and desirable qualities of a distinguished and highly honored academic scholar and frontier scientist.     

From birds to hydroids: Charles Cleveland Nutting (1858–1927) of the University of Iowa,USA

Charles Cleveland Nutting (1858–1927) began his academic career at the University of Iowa, and at the Natural History Museum of the university, in 1886. A naturalist with a bent for ornithology, he became interested in cnidarians, and especially hydroids and alcyonarians, as an outcome of expeditions to the Bahamas in 1888 and 1893. Most noteworthy among his works on Cnidaria were three classic volumes on American hydroids, dealing respectively with Plumulariidae (1900), Sertulariidae (1904), and Campanulariidae and Bonneviellidae (1915). Other papers dealt with hydroids from Britain, Alaska and Puget Sound, Woods Hole and vicinity, Hawaii, and the Philippine region. He founded two new families, seven new genera, and 175 new species of Hydrozoa, ranking him among the top three authors of species names in the group. Nutting also described 206 new nominal species of Alcyonaria. Important among his works on alcyonarians were monographs on Indonesian material from the Siboga expedition, and on ’Albatross’ collections from Hawaii, Japan, and elsewhere in the northwest Pacific. While birds and later hydroids were Nutting’s primary research interests, much of his 41-year professional career was devoted to academic duties at the University of Iowa and to advancement of its Natural History Museum. As museum Director, he significantly expanded the collections, organized exhibits and public programs, and petitioned for satisfactory facilities and funding. Under his leadership, in whole or in part, expeditions to collect specimens for research, teaching, and exhibition were carried out to the Bay of Fundy (1890), Manitoba (1891), the Bahamas and vicinity (1893), Barbados and Antigua (1918), and Fiji and New Zealand (1922). In tribute to Nutting and his contributions to biology, one genus and more than 30 species are named in his honor.     

"Do not lose the winning games". To the 100th anniversary of M.E. Lobashev

Mikhail E. Lobashev (1907-1971), Head of the Department of Genetics and Breeding with the Leningrad (now, St. Petersburg) State University from 1957 to 1971, had traveled a long way from a homeless to an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation. Lobashev was among the discoverers of chemical mutagenesis in Drosophila; he pioneered in connecting the mutation process and the repair of genetic material and developed the concept of signal inheritance. Through the entire Great Patriotic War, he served with the field forces, and defended his doctoral dissertation on the physiological hypothesis of mutation process in 1946 on the return to the University. In 1948, Mikhail Efimovich was discharged from the University, where he was the Dean of the Biological Faculty, as a Morganist. On his return to the University in 1957, Lobashev devoted all his energies to the restoration of genetic education in this country, wrote the first domestic genetic textbook in the post-Lysenko period, organized the research at the Department of Genetics and Breeding, and created the scientific school, whose representatives are still successfully working in the field of genetics.     

“Do not lose the winning games” to the 100th anniversary of M.E. Lobashev

Mikhail E. Lobashev (1907–1971), Head of the Department of Genetics and Breeding with the Leningrad (now, St. Petersburg) State University from 1957 to 1971, had traveled a long way from a homeless to an Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation. Lobashev was among the discoverers of chemical mutagenesis in Drosophila; he pioneered in connecting the mutation process and the repair of genetic material and developed the concept of signal inheritance. Through the entire Great Patriotic War, he served with the field forces, and defended his doctoral dissertation on the physiological hypothesis of mutation process in 1946 on the return to the University. In 1948, Mikhail Efimovich was discharged from the University, where he was the Dean of the Biological Faculty, as a Morganist. On his return to the University in 1957, Lobashev devoted all his energies to the restoration of genetic education in this country, wrote the first domestic genetic textbook in the post-Lysenko period, organized the research at the Department of Genetics and Breeding, and created the scientific school, whose representatives are still successfully working in the field of genetics.     

Albert Howard and the mycorrhizal association

Albert Howard worked as an imperial agronomist for the British Government in India. Following his retirement in 1931, he returned to England and embarked on a passionate global campaign to reform agricultural practices. Central to Howard's project was the mycorrhizal association, a symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi, believed to play an important part in plant nutrition. I show that there are a number of close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the mycorrhizal association, and argue that Howard used these fungi to naturalise his imperial project. Understood in this way, these mycorrhizal and imperial associations reveal ways that Howard was able to negotiate the boundaries between the local and global, England and India, science and agriculture, institute and village, and soil and plant. In contrast to Thomas Gieryn's work on hybridisation at the cultural boundaries between science and non-science, I concentrate on Howard's use of intermediaries to negotiate and articulate specific boundaries within his imperial project. Arguing that this approach reveals limitations in Gieryn's hybrid framework, I suggest that a focus on Howard's dependence on intermediaries draws attention to the discontinuities between entities, besides the dynamic ways that they might be coupled.     

No evolution,no heredity,just development—Julius Schaxel and the end of the Evo–Devo agenda in Jena, 1906–1933: a case study

Julius Schaxel is an almost forgotten figure in the history of early twentieth century biology. By focusing on his life and work, I would like to illustrate several central developments in that period of history of biology. Julius Schaxel was an early representative and organizer of theoretical biology, discussing and criticizing both Wilhelm Roux’s mechanism and Hans Driesch’s vitalism. In addition to his theoretical work, Schaxel also did experimental research on developmental issues to support his critique. In this paper, special emphasis is made on the negotiating practice of Schaxel, which he used to establish a new area of biological research and a new audience for that area. In contrast to these new fields, Schaxel can be also portrayed as the endpoint of a research tradition investigating ontogeny and phylogeny together, which today is called Evo–Devo. Following Garland Allen’s dialectical processes that led to the decline of the Evo–Devo research agenda, Schaxel’s example is used to investigate these processes.     

Rupert Riedl and the re-synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology: body plans and evolvability

This paper reviews the scientific career of Rupert Riedl and his contributions to evolutionary biology. Rupert Riedl, a native of Vienna, Austria, began his career as a marine biologist who made important contributions to the systematics and anatomy of major invertebrate groups, as well as to marine ecology. When he assumed a professorship at the University of North Carolina in 1968, the predominant thinking in evolutionary biology focused on population genetics, to the virtual exclusion of most of the rest of biology. In this atmosphere Riedl developed his "systems theory" of evolution, which emphasizes the role of functional and developmental integration in limiting and enabling adaptive evolution by natural selection. The main objective of this theory is to account for the observed patterns of morphological evolution, such as the conservation of body plans. In contrast to other "alternative" theories of evolution, Riedl never denied the importance of natural selection as the driving force of evolution, but thought it necessary to contextualize natural selection with the organismal boundary conditions of adaptation. In Riedl's view development is the most important factor besides natural selection in shaping the pattern and processes of morphological evolution.     

The Articulata hypothesis – or what is a segment?

The long held view that annelids and arthropods are closely related (Articulata) has been challenged recently by phylogenetic analyses using molecular data. The outcome of these studies is a clade of moulting animals (Ecdysozoa) comprising arthropods and some taxa of the nemathelminth worms. Monophyly of the Ecdysozoa has not yet been shown convincingly on morphological evidence, but is strongly supported by molecular data. The implication of the Ecdysozoa hypothesis is that the type of segmentation found in annelids and arthropods must be either convergent or an ancestral feature of protostomes or even bilaterians. The present review discusses aspects of segmentation in annelids and arthropods at the genetic, cellular, morphogenetic and morphological levels. Based on numerous similarities not shared with other bilaterian taxa it is suggested that segmentation of annelids and arthropods is homologous and apomorphic for a monophyletic Articulata. However, the challenge provided by the molecular analyses should stimulate research programmes gaining more data such as on additional genes, cleavage patterns, molecular developmental biology, and the comparison of nervous systems at the level of single neurons.     

Thomas Hunt Morgan as an Embryologist: The View from Bryn Mawr

Thomas Hunt Morgan taught at Bryn Mawr College from 1891 until1904. During his years there he concentrated his research interestson embryology; he included regeneration as an integral partof development. This article maintains that Morgan did not abandonhis interest in embryology when he became a geneticist at Columbia,but it deals mainly with his teaching and research while atBryn Mawr. He worked on the development of a great diversityof organisms, plant and animal, he used widely differing experimentalmethods to investigate them, and he concerned himself with manydifferent general and special problems. He strove to investigateproblems that were directly soluble by experimental intervention,and was highly critical, in the best possible way, of the experimentsand interpretations made by his contemporaries, who regardedhim as a leader. He exerted his influence on developmental biologynot only through his research, but also through a number offine textbooks, and by his teaching. During his Bryn Mawr yearshe encouraged his students, undergraduate and graduate, to carryout independent research. He sometimes published with them asco-author, but dozens of articles by his students were publishedwithout carrying Morgan's name as co-author.