Lecture 7 (6/3/09): "Hey, Four Eyes!"

On Tuesday afternoon, I got myself over to the NCG cinemas with a couple of good friends to see the new Pixar movie, "UP" (I'm a big fan of all the Pixar animated films). The thing is, it was in 3D and we all had to wear the new 3D glasses (shown at top right) during the show.

I must say, the new animated 3D movie experience is quite impressive and nothing like the lame attempts at 3D films when I was growing up in the 70s & 80s (I was 13 yrs. old when Jaws 3-D was released-you can do the math). At least in the hands of the skilled animators at Pixar studios, the use of this new 3D technology in UP truly offer viewers an entirely new type of visual experience. There was a certain 'texture' to the film that I hadn't seen in any of the previous Pixar films (or, for that matter, any animated film). At least for the 96 minutes it was playing on the screen, I saw the world--both literally and figuratively--through a new pair of glasses.

OK, so why am I telling you this and what does it have to do with Lectures 6 & 7 in BS110?

Well, late last night I was thinking that my experience watching "UP" through the 3D glasses is not unlike how Professor S has been asking you to see the natural world...that is, through a pair of Darwinian glasses.

I've been telling you that this was coming for at least a week in my previous Blogs (in particular, see "When Darwin Meets Madonna" & "Learning the Language of Variation"). On Monday, however, Professor S plunged us fully into the world of Darwinism and our time here in this Blog will be time well spent if we re-walked through some of the slides he shared with you in Lecture 7 (in a future post, I will come back to the "Critters" that he presented to you in the last 20 minutes of Lecture 6...after the exam).

In many ways, the old picture at left is a perfect image representing what you and your classmates were supposed to look like by the end of yesterday's lecture: You all were supposed to walk out of lecture with the ability to look at events in occurring in the natural world through a new pair of glasses. Lets now take a look at some of the interesting ways that Professor S crafted these new Darwinian lenses...

Translating a VERY IMPORTANT slide...

I'm not sure if you realized it at the time, but the slide at right is an extremely important slide...maybe as important as a single slide I drew your attention to in the Lecture 1 Blog ("Concepts, Principles & Models Oh My!").

I don't know about you, but I thought many of the slides Professor S used in Lecture 7 were very nicely sequenced. He tackled difficult ideas but managed to choose graphics and a sequence for his slides in such a way that I felt I could easily follow his ideas. I know I walked away from class with a better understanding of things that I thought I already understood!

The slide at right, however, is the one exception: For a slide that contains such important ideas, I thought it could have been presented a little differently...so as to maybe bring the important ideas in it more forward, and into a different light. Here's one way that you and I might translate this slide...

As you can see, in the slide below at right, Prof S's text is still there (in light gray) and I have translated each of his phrases or words into my own (in black). At the top, you can see that I think he was asking you a question: What makes organisms appear different? If you have a brother or a sister, for example, what could possibly make you taller than him or her? And this is where your Darwinian glasses come in, so please find them and put them on...I'll wait.

In a Darwinian world, there are at least 3 likely explanations as to what could make you taller than your brother or sister, (1) You might appear different because of something 'IN' there, (2) You might appear different because of something 'OUT' there, or (3) You might appear different because of something 'DURING' there.

Is there a "(4)" i.e., some combination of 1, 2, and/or 3 above? There is!!! Which is why Prof S had all of the red arrows between the different words and phrases on his original slide. This is one of the reasons why biology research might be considered 'hard' or difficult: Every time you want to figure out what makes one living thing (or a group of living things) is different from another, you have take 3 different individual 'factors' into consideration--IN there, OUT there, and DURING there (or some combination of the three!).

Here's a question for you: Why did I make a dotted red square around the "Genetics (Genotype)" (or "IN there") term?

I did this because I want to draw special attention to the fact that this is where you have been spending lecture time with Prof S during Lectures 1-5. For the past two weeks, you've been exploring terms like base pairs, nucleotides, DNA, genes, alleles, chromosomes, meiosis, etc. Why?

Because Prof S wants you to be able to talk more fluently about what's IN THERE. In where? INside of organisms! Which means INside of cells! Which means INside of chromosomes! Which means INside of genes/alleles! Which means INside of DNA! Which means INside of nucleotides and base pairs! (By the way, can you see that I've just walked you 'down' in scale with each of my "Which means..." phrases? Each successive phrase walks you down a size scale--from larger things to smaller things.)

OUT THERE and DURING THERE..

In this course, have we spent much time in lectures talking about what is OUT there that might make organisms appear different? (In other words, what is OUTside of an organisms cells or body.) Have we spent much time talking about what is DURING there that might make organisms appear different? (In other words, DURING an organism's time living on the Earth.) The answer to both questions is, "No, not really." Why do you think this is?

I have a possible explanation I'd like to share with you. I think that biology professors make an assumption: they often assume that you already know about what's OUT there (and what's DURING there) that might make organisms appear different. Why do they assume this? They assume this because the OUT THERE (i.e., the "environment") and the DURING THERE (e.g., the different stages of an organisms "life cycle") are things that they assume you have seen or experienced in your time on Earth. They assume that you already know about some things in the environment (OUT THERE) and they assume that you already know some things about different phases, states or "stages" in which organisms can be found between birth and death (DURING THERE). They don't, however, assume that you know much about what's IN there because, optically speaking, what's IN THERE (i.e., in your cells, in your chromosomes, in your DNA, etc.) is really difficult to see without technological supports like microscopes and gel electrophoresis contraptions.

Now, where was I...how did I get on that tangent?

Oh yeah...

Prof S has just spent the first 5 lectures devloping the part of your Darwinian glasses that allow you to see how what's IN THERE can make organisms appear different. One way to think about the exam you took last Friday was as a test to see how your IN THERE glasses 'fit.' In other words, Prof S was testing how well you could use your IN THERE glasses when needed. For the time being, think of your IN THERE glasses as the yellow pair of glasses in the image at right.

I don't know if you realized it or not, but in Lecture 7 Prof S started teaching you how to use the OUT THERE glasses (the blue ones) and the DURING THERE glasses (the red ones).

Do you remember the oak tree slide at left? Which pair of glasses do you think Prof S was teaching you how to use when he showed you this slide?

I hope you said the DURING THERE glasses. This was a slide in which he talk about how an oak tree displays "phenotypic variation" depending upon the stage the oak tree is in its life cycle. This is the lanaguage of DURING THERE glasses.

Do you remember the spruce tree slide at left? Which pair of glasses do you think Prof S was teaching you how to use when he showed you this slide?

I hope you said the OUT THERE glasses. This was a slide in which he talk about how a spruce tree shows "phenotypic variation" depending on the environmental conditions in which it has to grow. This is the language of OUT THERE glasses.

These weren't the only two slides in which Prof S was practicing going back and forth between the yellow, blue and red glasses! Do you remember the thought exercises he had you do with your lab partners regarding the population of bald eagles on the Manistee River, the population of E. coli in the petri dishes, and the population of white-footed mice in the MSU woodlots? Each of these scenarios was designed to teach you how to use the 3 pairs of glasses at the same time. Pretty cool, huh?

Over the next few weeks (and for much of the rest of the semester), I have a hunch you will be learning much more about how to use the OUT THERE, DURING THERE, and the IN THERE glasses. Some of you may get really good at using one of them, however, a word of caution: My guess is that your exam performance will largely depend on how well you can coordinate wearing all three glasses at the same time.

Wrapping up today's Blog...

Why did I put the term "population" in bold blue italic text above? I did this because I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that in Lecture 7 Prof S was starting to take a step 'up' from where we've been in the course in terms of scale. In Lecture 7 you didn't really hear that much about molecules and cells did you? (Although, if you've been following my Blog you know that they were there! You just needed to put your IN THERE glasses on to see them.)

Instead of cells and molecules, Prof S talked more about individual organisms and populations of organisms. This is a step 'up' in terms of scale from something smaller (a single organism) to something bigger (a group or population of organisms). Given this new step up scale, I have a suggestion. Last week, a BS110 student asked me to end my Blogs with a question or an exercise that would help prepare her for future exams. So here goes...

In Lecture 7, Prof S showed a slide that I will talk about in much more detail in my next Blog. The slide is at right. Here's what I think you should do:

• Carefully craft a paragraph to describe the ideas found within this slide (recall that Prof S referred to it as a "model"). Here's a suggestion of terms to be sure to include: DNA, cell(s), individual(s), organism(s), population(s), species, genes, alleles, variation, environment, life cycle.

If you want you can send the paragraph to me by email and I'll choose a paragraph or two to talk/walk through in a future Blog (we can make them anonymous if you want).

Looking ahead...

Given the end of Prof S's lecture on Monday, it may seem strange to you that I didn't say anything in today's Blog about "natural selection" or "evolution." I want to emphasize right now that there were some very important moments (HUGE, important moments, actually) near the end of Lecture 7. No doubt I will get to these item in the next couple of Blogs, but I felt it was more important to put forth some basic language that I will try to use consistently for the next couple of weeks. I will continue to use phrases like "IN THERE," "OUT THERE," and "DURING THERE" until you can comfortably go back and forth between these phrases and their more scientific/technical equivalents.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you take a break from your studying, go to the movies, and get to know something that requires a different type of glasses...some non-Darwinian glasses...in other words, a pair of (3D) glasses that can help you see what is "UP" there.