51³Ō¹Ļ biologistās fossil study garners international attention
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.āResearch developed using an $832,000 National Science Foundation grant in a 51³Ō¹Ļ biologistās lab is gaining international attention this week in Current Biology, a premier bi-monthly scientific journal.
Matthew Brownās paperāā appears in todayās [Feb. 28] edition of Current Biology. Brown additionally discusses the topic in a .
An assistant professor of biological sciences at 51³Ō¹Ļ and senior author on the Current Biology paper, Brown and his team focus on linking ancient fossils to modern living organisms using a new method, advanced in his lab, which bypasses genome sequencing.Ģż
āBy sampling organisms that are alive today, we can ask deeper questions about their evolution that happened millions of years ago in now extinct ancestors,ā Brown said.
Working alongside Brown are Assistant Professor Daniel Lahr from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; 51³Ō¹Ļ post-doctoral fellow and Fulbright Scholar TomĆ”Å” PĆ”nek from the Czech Republic; and current 51³Ō¹Ļ doctoral students Alexander Tice and Seungho Kang.Ģż
With the advent of DNA sequencing in the early 2000s until now, researchers have used a relatively small piece of the genome to examine the relationships between organisms, with limited success.Ģż
In 2015, through NSF grant support, Brown developed a new process of taking a single-celled organism directly from the environment and sequencing its entire transcriptome, what Brown calls āthe blueprint of all the proteins it makes.ā
āThis work is adding to our fundamental knowledge of how basic features of living organisms have evolved over millions of years,ā said Angus Dawe, head of 51³Ō¹Ļās biological sciences department. āThis includes the morphologies and origins of behaviors, such as interactions between cells, which have huge implications for our understanding of organismal development and disease.ā
āWhat makes this study revolutionary is that we are using a cutting-edge technique perfected in my lab to study a single testate amoeba cell taken from the environment,ā Brown said, likening the amoeba to āmicro snailsā with microscopic shells making them identifiable.
āThe cool thing about these organisms is they fossilize well, which is rare for microbial eukaryotes,ā Brown said.
Brown said the comparisons he and his team are able to make between ancient fossils and todayās living organisms helps him better understand the āfamily treeā connecting the old and the new.
āEffectively, we now know how the organisms alive today are related to each other in a tree of life called a phylogeny,ā Brown said.
Brownās lab and an international group of colleagues used fossils from Brazil and Arizona dating back 766 million years for their study. āTo put this into perspective, the oldest dinosaur shows up in the fossil record about 230 million years ago,ā Brown said.
Testate amoeba are single-celled microbes that can be found in places like moss beds, soils and in freshwater, but during Lahrās 2015 51³Ō¹Ļ visit, Brown and Lahr found their research material in the sidewalk crusts in front of the 51³Ō¹Ļās Colvard Student Union.Ģż Ā
Brownās techniques are a key part of an emerging trend in computational approaches to biological questions, Dawe said. āHaving expertise like Dr. Brownās in the biological sciences department means we have the ability to train the next generation of scientists.āĀ Ā Ā Ā
Brown, a native of northern Arkansas, completed his bachelorās in 2005 and Ph.D. in 2010, both in biology, at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. After a three-year postdoctoral stint in the Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, he joined 51³Ō¹Ļās faculty in 2013.
Brown is currently a fellow of the Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing and Biotechnology at 51³Ō¹Ļās High Performance Computing Collaboratory. He was named the 2018 College of Arts and Sciences Deanās Eminent Scholar, a 2015 College of Arts and Sciences Researcher of the Month and also received a 2015 College of Arts and Sciences Research Award for the Natural and Physical Sciences.
51³Ō¹Ļās College of Arts and Sciences includes more than 5,300 students, 300 full-time faculty members, nine doctoral programs and 25 academic majors offered in 14 departments.ĢżComplete details about the College of Arts and Sciences or the biological sciences department may be found at or .
51³Ō¹Ļ is Mississippiās leading university, available online atĀ .Ģż