Throughout the past seven weeks, we have had the opportunity to hear from many faculty members about the fascinating research they are doing on campus. The work I found to be the most interesting was that of Dr. Mohammed Noor. Evolution was something that I grew up simply believing to be true, but I never really gave thought to how it occurred, beyond natural selection (or genetic engineering, in this day in age). I recently listened to a podcast on which an evolutionary biochemist spoke about a current theory of how eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes. The very simplified version of that story is that one prokaryote swallowed up another, then the inner cell developed into the mitochondria and this source of energy allowed to cell to evolve beyond the reaches of prokaryotic cells and thus eukaryotes were born. Essentially, all eukaryotic species developed from that one, singular event. This singular event took over a billion years to occur. This theory blew my mind and made evolution a much more intriguing topic to me. It seems unlikely that such a diverse array of species developed from that single event, but on the other hand it makes sense that such an improbable event would occur only once ever.
Anyway, I only bring up that podcast because it is what sparked my interest in evolutionary biology, the field in which Dr. Noor works. His research questions focus on the more recent evolutionary events, specifically the genetic evolution that allows new species to develop and persist. However, I learned that defining a species is a very difficult process because there are often many subtle differences in populations that are debated as to whether qualify organisms to be a new species. Interestingly, there are barrier traits that exist between gene pools, to deter species from interbreeding. These barrier traits could cause sterile offspring or an absence of attraction. Dr. Noor’s specific questions focus on the genetic changes that produce barrier traits and how the barrier traits are driven, in order to drive speciation. I am very glad that I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Noor speak about his research and I look forward to taking his class next spring!
