About bioinformatics and molecular evolution
"One of the main questions of a biologist: who and how will life force to survive"
Anastasia Novak
On May 25, Mikhail Gelfand, a biologist, deputy director of the Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, will give a speech at the Central House of the Journalist. Lecture topic: "Molecular evolution". Three weeks before his speech, the scientist told "Polit.<url>" about the difficulties of bioinformatics and biologists in Russia, as well as about the modern possibilities of studying evolution.
Photo: Natasha Chetverikova / <url>
– Mikhail Sergeyevich, what opportunities and difficulties do Russian biologists and bioinformatics have today?
– Experimental biology and bioinformatics are in different situations today. Bioinformatics in Russia can be done at least as long as the Internet has not been turned off – the data necessary for scientists, as a rule, is open. In addition, we work with computers, not with living beings and test tubes, which also simplifies life. Russian bioinformatics is at the world level – we can easily interact with scientists from other countries. For example, I have co-authors from Europe, whom I have never seen or talked to live, during the writing of the article we communicated only by e-mail.
But experimental biology in Russia is hard to do, there are many bureaucratic difficulties for it. Bureaucratic difficulties are our common, not the specifics of science. In modern Russia it is generally hard and disgusting to live. There are difficulties with devices and consumables, which are many times more expensive than in other countries. It's not even about the greed of suppliers – they have to share with customs and with many others so that the goods somehow somehow pass. Moreover, samples are treated inattentively at customs. For example, an antibody that needs to be stored in liquid nitrogen is cleared for two weeks, and at this time it is stored at best in a simple refrigerator, and at worst – just in a drawer. It is clear that it comes to the scientist already soured.
In addition, we have adopted a wonderful law in its cretinism banning the export of biological materials from Russia: I can still take myself abroad entirely, but I can no longer send a sample of my blood to another country. But world science is international: scientists exchange both living organisms and samples for research all the time.
– Your lecture at the ProScience Theater will be devoted to evolution. Tell us, what theory of evolution do scientists adhere to today?
– After the synthetic theory – the combination of Darwinism and genetics – the neutral theory of molecular evolution became the next advance. Canonical Darwinism believed that gene changes can be beneficial and harmful. Harmful ones are eliminated by natural selection, useful ones are picked up by selection and reproduced in the next generations. Most of the changes that occur, of course, are harmful – if you accidentally start poking somewhere with a screwdriver, then most likely you will break it. But it turned out that at the molecular level, changes in most cases do not affect anything and are fixed by chance, under the influence of the so-called molecular drift.
At first it seemed that all the changes in the species arose as a result of adaptation. But if all the changes were adaptive, they would occur very unevenly over time. It was also very difficult for biologists to build phylogenetic chain trees based on adaptive traits, reflecting the evolutionary relationships between different species that have a common ancestor. Trees would also confuse parallel changes in directly unrelated species. For example, whales, sharks and ichthyosaurs have approximately the same changes – if you live in water, you will be streamlined, with fins and a large tail – but this does not prove that these three creatures are close relatives.
But neutral changes go like clockwork, almost regularly – substitutions accumulate, take root, and sometimes are removed by natural selection – this allowed scientists to build trees on the principle of "who is more similar is a closer relative." The correctness of this statement is confirmed by modern research.
– How do scientists note changes in species?
It is known that changes in the structure of animals – for example, the fact that a bat's wing was formed from its brush – are determined not so much by genes as by how their regulation is arranged – how they turn on and off. This happens, as a rule, in embryonic development.
As a result, a scientific direction appeared – evolution-development – scientists in this field are trying to link evolutionary constructs with the development and work of genes in the embryo. There is no related theory in this field of science yet, but this is a very promising direction.
– Is it possible to say that evolution has some kind of pace?
– If this is a neutral evolution of the genome sequence, then its pace is more or less constant. And if this is morphological evolution, then from time to time there are explosions of diversity, the construction of new forms. For example, whales are the closest relatives of hippos. Whales used to be artiodactyls, and then for some reason they got into the water and changed a lot. Scientists have found many intermediate skeletons showing how whales gradually adapted to life in the water.
– Can biologists and bioinformatics predict future evolutionary changes?
– Evolution can be predicted if you know how natural conditions will change. If life forces walruses to live permanently in the water, then they will become like whales – now they are more like highly modified dogs. If someone is forced to fly by life, they will grow wings. The only question is who and how life will force.
Mikhail Gelfand's speech will take place on May 25 at the Central House of the Journalist at:
Arbatskaya metro station, Nikitsky Boulevard, 8a. It starts at 19:00.
Tickets can be purchased on the websites kassir.ru , ponominalu.ru , timepad.ru .
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru05.05.2015