In article <latteric-0705951550340001 at alliance.hip.berkeley.e> latteric at mendel.berkeley.edu writes:
>What is the the most exciting research done in the field of microbiology
>(yesterday, today, tomorrow) ? And why ? Why do you think that it is
>exciting to work on microorganisms other than using them as tools to
>express DNA and proteins ?
>The chance to open up quite novel areas of biology is arguably greatest
among the microorganisms. As I have posted before, it is becoming
absolutely clear that prokaryotes talk to members of their own species
using pheromones.
Stephen Jay Gould has many nice quotes; an appropriate one is:
"Organisms are not billiard balls, struck in deterministic fashion by the
cue of natural selection and rolling to optimal positions on life's table.
They influence their own destiny in interesting, complex and comprehensible
ways. We must put the concept of the organism back into evolutionary biology."
S.J. Gould (1993), Evolution of organisms, in The Logic of Life, ed.
CAR Boyd & D Noble, pp. 15-42. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
We recently reviewed this topic:
Kell, D.B., Kaprelyants, A.S. & Grafen, A. (1995) On pheromones, social
behaviour and the functions of secondary metabolism in bacteria. Trends
Ecol. Evolution 10, 126-129.
Soon the yeast genome will be sequenced, like it or not. On present
form, > one third of all genes will be of unknownm function. Finding out
those functions and the conditions in which they are expressed (so why
they are retained) will be a big and exciting challenge. Hard to do, and not
only for ethical reasons, in people.
Just two hot topics which make buggs the experiemntal material of choice.
Douglas.
