This time the guest in the section is Yoav Ram, a doctoral student in the Laboratory of Theoretical Evolution at Tel Aviv University who describes his work and also asks for the readers' assistance to promote it instead of government funding
Scientists need to investigate. There is not much debate about that. But very few people - at least outside the scientific community - are aware that scientists also need to talk, and a lot. A university researcher spends a few weeks a year traveling from one scientific conference to another and reporting the results of his research. This is one of the best ways to promote yourself among the scientific community, find partners for future research and come up with new ideas in the company of other smart people.
But what if there is no money to fly? This problem mainly bothers the doctoral students who are not endowed with great wealth, and find it difficult to scratch the money needed to fly to the scientific conferences and spend the night in the area.
They need your help!
In America, a new and impressive initiative was launched, which allows scientists to reveal their activities to the general public and raise resources for trips to research sites, for the purchase of equipment or for flights to scientific conferences. One of the young researchers in Israel, a doctoral student named Yoav Ram, is participating in this project, and he needs your help. I asked him to write himself what his research is about, and if he convinces you that it is really an important topic, you are welcome to contribute in the attached links. He has already raised 31% of the requested amount ($1,111), and I hope that thanks to the publication here he will be able to reach the desired goal.
And now - to Yoav.
So believe that if you broke it - you can also fix it
Mutations are of enormous importance to evolution: they are the raw material on which natural selection works and are therefore the source of every new adaptation. However, most of the mutations are negative and cause damage. This diagnosis led to the general agreement that living things should avoid mutations at all costs, an agreement that was backed up by the discovery of error correction mechanisms in DNA and theoretical studies published during the 60's and 70's.
Recently, there has been a challenge to this view of mutations, as accidental and inevitable mistakes. Over the past few years, several studies have shown that bacteria produce more mutations when under stress such as starvation, heat and antibiotics. However, most biologists believe that bacteria under stress produce more mutations, simply because the stress prevents them from correcting errors in their DNA and also causes them to make more errors - after all, we all make more errors under stress.
My research, which uses mathematical models and computer simulations, shows that this notion is wrong: I have shown that when bacteria are under stress, increasing the rate of mutation production (by disabling the error correction mechanisms) actually helps the bacteria escape the stress, with the help of the rare positive mutations they accumulate more quickly . In fact, increasing the rate of mutations accelerates the evolution of bacteria!
My discoveries are of great importance. All over the world, we create stress conditions for bacteria all the time with antibiotics, and yet the bacteria manage to overcome the stress and develop immunity to any new drug. Today, the study of antibacterial drugs assumes that the mutation rate of bacteria is constant and does not depend on external factors - but my results show that this assumption is unfounded. This means that we have much more to learn about the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria, if only we change our starting assumptions, and the same applies to other problems in biology. For example, cancer cells behave like bacteria, so my research also has an impact on human cancer research.
I need your help!
My findings could change the way we understand evolution, so it is important that I talk to researchers in the field and tell them about the results of my research. This January there will be a conference of the population genetics group in Nottingham, England. This conference is an excellent opportunity to present the results of my research - it brings together about 200 scientists who are involved in evolutionary biology in an informal environment that encourages the participation of young scientists.
You can take part in changing the way we think about mutations and evolution! Any participation from you will help finance the travel expenses and registration to the conference. In addition, each participant will receive a personal souvenir.
come in locate And take part - whether by financial participation or by spreading the message further!
This appeal is part of a project called SciFund and is intended to promote the relationship between the public and science. The project allows researchers to raise funds directly from the public without the mediation of foundations and governments. In this way, people interested in science can directly contribute to research that interests and intrigues them, and their contribution has a direct impact. Researchers can raise funds in smaller amounts and more quickly, allowing them to build a more flexible research program. But even more importantly, the project creates an incentive for researchers to address the public and explain their work and promotes a direct and personal connection between scientific research and the general public.
Learn more about SciFund
Yoav Ram
PhD student at the Laboratory of Theoretical Evolution at Tel Aviv University
11 תגובות
Yair,
Students (even at the Weizmann Institute) receive funding for conferences abroad, but by definition not much. The main part of the funding comes from research budgets that the laboratory obtains, who is more and who is less, and the distribution of the funds is in the hands of the head of the laboratory and not in the hands of the student. It happens many times that if the student wants to attend a conference and the head of the laboratory is not willing to finance it (and not because the conference is irrelevant to work) then he is forced to find money from all kinds of sources and sometimes even pay out of his own pocket (from personal experience in the past). There are of course those who in principle are not willing to pay out of their own pockets and the meaning is that they give up conferences. This situation is a disgrace (even if it could have been worse, which is a very idiotic argument if you want to belong to a progressive western country). Leaving this disgraceful situation as it is and even worsening it as has been done many times, is criminal negligence on the part of the one who is supposed to lead the State of Israel. Unlike doctors, whose contribution, or rather their lack, is felt immediately, the products of education and science are felt only after several years, sometimes even a decade or two. At the same time, one would have to be truly blind not to see the importance of science for the economy, security, health and in fact for every significant field in the country. Apart from the state's interest in investing in students (and not yeshiva students, for example) because of the safe investment in the former as pointed out by R.H. There is a matter of national responsibility here, and in this, unfortunately, the governments fail miserably.
Yair, it is you who forgets what you should surely know, that research students are the power (and also the brain) that moves the wheels of research. By analogy, they are the specialists of medicine and without them the system will collapse, once and for all. At the same time, master's and doctoral students (and actually also postdocs) earn very little in relation to their abilities, the working hours they invest which are quite similar to the investment of high-tech people, except that research students do not earn as much as high-tech people. For those who don't already know, research students do work for everything, the amazing thing is that when a research student tries to raise money, not for a vacation, God forbid, but for work, there are people like you Yair who think it is enough to convey information in articles and emails and that research students have to work (with additional work!) to finance the their main job. I would like to see a reaction from a high-tech person who is told that he has to work an extra job so that he can finance a business trip on behalf of the company he works for.
R.H.
Indeed the state should invest in such a student, but he should not snore. And see the words of a colleague. You also ignored what you know and I wrote, that students also receive funding for conferences abroad.
I have a serious fundamental problem with this initiative:
The idea that researchers should extort money from the public is pathetic. There is a huge state budget and it can finance all the worthy studies.
Such an initiative creates contempt for science and frees the state from responsibility for promoting science in Israel.
By the way, I also think in a similar way about associations like the "Soldier's Association".
The State of Israel has already gone through its difficult years after its establishment. There is plenty of money in the country that is wasted on administrative corruption, inflated budgets, etc.
I feel sorry for first-rate scientists who humiliate themselves with a "string".
You are right Yair. Indeed, the Israeli students should work for a living, go only to conferences in Israel, send information by e-mail and we will transfer the money to our excellent boys in the yeshiva.
I hope you will be appointed Minister of Science because with your method we will go really, really far.
Don't you understand that from the state's point of view every shekel in a student is a safe investment because tomorrow he is the one who will pay taxes, and a lot?
The demand for funding from the public is irritating cynicism. As I know from the Weizmann Institute, master's degree students in natural sciences receive good funding, and even better for a doctorate, and also funding for conferences, and many conferences are also held in Israel. In other disciplines, the student pays for the master's degree, and in other disciplines, the doctorate has partial funding, if at all, and the student in most cases also works. Information is conveyed in articles and emails very nicely,
The idea claimed to have been proven by the study (it's a shame we didn't read how) has already been brought up before and it also appears in the book by Chava Yablonka and Marion Lamb - "Evolution in four dimensions".
This name means only an idea and detailing the findings of the current study - findings following which it is presented here as a conclusion - could have been interesting.
By the way - even in everyday life the protection against mutations is not so tight. This is what makes it possible to identify a person based on genetic findings, it is what is behind a number of genetic diseases and in general - it makes our diversity possible.
It should also be remembered that part of the resistance to diseases is not created by the creation of a new mutation, but by the overbreeding of individuals in which the necessary mutation was already present, but under the previous conditions it did not give them an advantage.
Another interesting thing I came across recently is the following claim:
The vast majority of antibiotic drugs originate from compounds that already exist in nature and are used by various creatures to protect themselves from their pests.
Therefore it is likely that most of the genes conferring resistance against them already exist somewhere in nature.
What is necessary, therefore, for a harmful bacterium to develop resistance - is not necessarily the "development" of the relevant gene from scratch, and in many cases what happens is the assimilation of a gene that exists in other organisms - into the genome of the bacterium that causes the disease.
Natural selection is an important element in evolution and no amount of puns from Mechabat will change that.
The resistance of bacteria is evidence of natural selection, not evolution. The bacteria do not develop any new mechanism, please differentiate.
I would like to see a simulation demonstrating how a bacterium develops a new enzyme. It really could have been impressive.
"This means that we still have a lot to learn about the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria, if only we change our starting assumptions" - for a change, I agree. I would like to see a scientist who thinks in the form of planning, and not a natural process. Who knows, maybe there is evidence of intentional mutations here?
Yoav,
I support this form of helping science with all my heart.
It may be just a question of phrasing, but from the way things were written there is no substantial difference between your conclusions from the results of the simulations and the accepted assumption that stress conditions increase the number of mutations as a result of the reduction of investment in repair mechanisms resulting from a lack of resources. There is no doubt that the increase in the number of mutations, and perhaps even in their level of complication, contributes to the likelihood of the appearance of mutations that will benefit the organism in the strained state it is in, a possibility that caused this trait to remain and perhaps even develop and sharpen throughout the ages. At the same time, these findings (as presented in the article) do not show that the accepted perception is wrong, what's more, you do not explain what it is wrong about and you do not come up with an alternative view at all: you only point out that the increased rate of mutations is beneficial to the organism, and this should not contradict the accepted view.
Adversity promotes evolution - well known fact in ancient wisdom. I support you.
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4140153,00.html