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Doctor schuman is a paleontologist, biologist, Science Writer as well as distinguished Service Professor at the university of chicago and associate dean at the university of biological science. Known for the Landmark Research on the evolutionary origin of for greenland, china at the earliest discoveries 375 he takes it further by sharing their discoveries including a by 2008 and the universe within from 2013. At least one of the programs some Assembly Required in the virtual return please join me in welcoming neil. It is great to be with you tonight. I hope this finds you and your loved ones well and happy and thriving and i look forward to the next 30 to 40 minutes of talking with you. Ive been a feelin a. A feeling and what a state biologist on evolution for over three decades. I began as an expeditionary paleontologist. Fossils tell us about the great steps and how did mammals arrived, how did frogs develop the jump and so one. On one of my first expeditions i got back thinking this is going to be great if showing genes that build bodies and how those evil. Ive got to learn this molecular biology stuff. If you were to come to chicago where we are right now with expeditions around the world to ask the question how does it happen to. Thats what some assembly is required is about. As i was finishing the book or reading a biography im going to share my screen, by Lillian Hellman has a very hardworking existence. She drank and smoked a and was pulled in front of the house and was blacklisted and burying her autobiography she had a quote that captures the spirit of the book in a nutshell. Nothing ever begins when you think it does. If you think it evolved that feathers arose as they took flight, you would be in very good company but they would also be wrong and that is the story in a nutshell the changes that we associate him with this story as we think about the dna of a what we have a the double helix is about 60 feet long. You have a 6foot long strand of dna not only inside itself but the nucleus of each so. Think about that for a second. For children of our own, each one of them. If you were to take over the dna each all 4 trillion or so it would run from here almost two pluto and we have lived in the era of genome projects and technology. It took several decades to get the sequence we can now get a rough copy of her less than a thousand dollars a. With all that Genetic Information we now see it as a highly active molecule inside the nucleus itself and as they become activated in different ways it is marvelously complex and i will start with one example and then look at other aspects of. Doctor shepherd is a professor of neurobiology at the university of utah and was in a state and what controls the formation and uses nice to study them because we have similar genes in this regard and one particular one called arc. Those that have a mutation with arc have a problem because they dont remember a solution the next day. It disrupts memory. Humans have many cognitive differences as well. Like any good for the next he was studying the protein that makes and he put it under a microscope and this is what he got. This is what he saw under the slide under the microscope what he noticed this is a super high magnification. He is looking at this and thinking. Remember this training as a biologist with the. These are formed by hiv virus that causes aids so what jason decided to do is im going to get some extras here are he calls colleagues over and asks them if to look at the slides but didnt tell them what was on. That set off a Chain Reaction and they looked at the sequence and it turned out it was a repurposed virus of the kind of. It invaded the genome of one of the ancestors and then as it entered it was repurposed instead of causing distress it was repurposed. Its a genetic material. Its repurposed it because it protects the genetic material. Here is the origin that came from a virus and it turns out that isnt unusual at all if you look at what is involved in pregnancy is such as those involved in placenta those are also repurposed into the list at keeps growing as we understand more about it its remarkable to the point where 8 is too removed. We have four times more genetic material so its really truly remarkable. So it goes to show its truly remarkable and surprising allowing us to see the evolution and a whole new way into some of the most important ways we can look at evolution and the most exciting ways this is one of the greatest puzzles now that a single cell wont be derived as it was over and over again we call this process single so it captures one of the greatest puzzles of biology how do you go from a single cell on the left to the right and those that interact to control the number of cells and the differentiation of where they are and so forth is a remarkable thing and as we begin to understand that this process going from egg to adult in a different species you can understand it and a whole new way to it explains a lot of evolution in how you build the body of the fish can produce. Its a big piece of understanding the. You can see the picture here. It had one of the worlds greatest jobs at a time after darwish debate over darwin published in 1859 he was the keeper of titles and amphibians. A great job at the time because people were coming back to paris from different parts of the globe from creatures they found and discovered tha antigua to sy them from the first time to describe these and understand the basic. It received the package they were about 4 inches long so they are fully functioning. They have external dealt with. What he did is kept them up. They actually do them extremely well and had a soup recipe of these things. He lets them go with a. We noticed about six months later he looked in this enclosure and these are the original diagrams. It is an entire different. Somebody put chimpanzees in a cage and came back the next year to find gorillas and chimpanzees inhabiting the same page. The book they decided to do is study their biology into something very remarkable. The larvae has external bills and they live in water like little tadpoles. They get bigger and bigger and become sexually mature as all of the features. They changed the shape and becomes, so heres one Developmental Program that depending on the environment can yield two different states. Whats important to realize is a simple shift of development to bring changes across the entire body. Think about that. They can produce change. This is a critical discovery there is a whole tradition of to look to see how small changes in development can bring about big changes in evolution. Now we can relate to this if you look at people these creatures here are human beings and as human beings, we share a number of characteristics. We have backbones and schools, so we share all the features with fish and birds and reptil reptiles. They are clearly in the development. The the closest invertebrate relatives are, get ready, these. Look at them, compared to creatures on the left to those on the right and you wont see many similarities. The creature on the right sticks to the rocks and pumps water through a siphon. There is no apparent spinal cord or bill or body and it gets even weirder. What do you do . Youve got to study the development. This is where it gets really interesting. This is the larva of these things. It hatches from the attic and has a larva with a head and a tail. If you look at the rest of the body it has the nerve cord becomes a spinal cord and another structure which is also part. So the closest relative in the embryo, look at the life history of these and they hatch from the egg begin as a tadpole and they have the nerve cord and swim around and attach to the rocks that began with me are similar to you make that bigger. We can now manipulate dna which im sure you may have read about. If they live in the sand and hop around him. There is a genetic address. Here we have three genes. A wear the blue arrow is enough forward facing legs and that is a part where the two genes are turned on. Theres a genetic address where you have the backward facing a. Of. Here he is controlling the genetic address by changing the genetic address. The data gets even deeper as it turns out they have these. If what you have in these areas is a genetic address it turns out we have these, too in the formation they are active in a lot of different organs whether a you can answer the question. If a. If you look at the normal development of the mouse, theres a genetic address for each kind. It. It turns out that genetic address. We have the joint address with the red hour showing. But if we build the same experiment and a that is exactly what happened. The there is a commonality. It is just the tip of the iceberg as all of these other structures in all sorts of other things have to go on the. The lungs this is one of the greatest characters in all of the compared anatomy. There were two passions in life. The. At least walk around new york city with samurai armor and various tones of a. They would go to the circus and build their. They would force it into their mouth and then into their lungs. It turns out in this is another, there are three different ones. Theres one in australia and one in south america and one in africa, this is the african one. You look at the lungs and you can see here on topic is a small structure. The the closest living relatives you can see them right there and the other is a. They live in the aqueous water environment where the content very. When you think of this transition from every other trade. It can move independently of the such that when the time came for them to walk on land, they already had. They were repurposing what already existed. The list goes on and on and on. We find each one of those in dinosaurs. They were using these trades to capture food on land. They were originally functioning for the regulation for the displays and things like that so just like others there was a major step in evolution and repurposing what exists. Nothing of course begins when you think it does. It begins earlier and in a different context and in that context is defined as destructors doing Different Things and can be repurposed for another so much of the evolution isnt about evolving the structure per se but new structures. We will answer them as we go. Would you be willing to weigh in your opinion on this election . This is a debate going on for years particularly about the altruistic traits if it appears to hurt the individual, how does it come about so there are two notions of how these come about. One is perhaps those that sacrificed themselves for the benefit. The there is a hot debate because the idea is Group Selection is a very slow process whereas the individual selection is a very efficient process. So in most cases people tended to favor the explanation that its not Group Selection thats important but its more individual selection you can have traits that act at Different Levels to help the individuals with. Particularly sexual reproduction because those that have that are more equal voca evil vocal in cs and groups that have the so that is one of the cases i would favor the selection but it would be topic by topic. So the second question do you believe they can pave the way to . It occurred that it probably would not. You can manipulate them to be isolated but i dont know why we would do that. We are already manipulating certain other kinds of creatures for their particular purpose to clean the environment and detoxify things for agricultural purposes and so forth. We are already doing a lot of that quite a bit. Weve already been doing it for other means of a. Any truth to the rumors any other genetic factors i dont know and im not an expert in it so im not willing to offer an opinion because it is outside of my zone and by the way, to talk about the virus for a second, we are witnessing the same is happening in real time. We are watching what happens in the months and years and days and weeks. Its also happening very fast. It gets into their hands and what youre seeing is resold after results coming up you see it coming up very rapidly. It is susceptible. Its complicated. When you look at the results keep in mind they are happening in real time and hypotheses and that is what people are trying to do. Stay skeptical about anything you see right now because we are just really weve only been here for two and a half months and it is amazing what we know being in the gene sequence it came out like midjanuary sometime and so much has happened since then. This is an interesting time for science and for the public because we are seeing it happen realtime. Theres also a short way of saying a [inaudible] i would love to hear about the emotional process basically what happens somebody sent this to me. One of the greatest things i saw was for my craft module. They are the group of creatures that are the closest relatives which is cool when you think about it. Do we know how to wear some were divided in two what controls the activity is interesting because we have the networks interacting with one another when you have the factors that diffuse the same time, take these factors that go across and within networks of others that have been turned on and off with response to those activities. And they control the u. S. Also there is a relation ship between those that are not advanced dividing the venue had the opening and closing and controlling the way are they so intelligence, they have a good brains. Their are those that try to understand consciousness because they consult puzzles. They would disappear every night or every week. If the genie granted you the ability to have one question you are researching what would that question be a. I would like to know how it originally came about because we have lots of ideas and i would love to know how that happens. The cellular life, i would like to see the steps involved in that. Nothing ever begins when you think about it. Its often something that would have to have been created but isnt it the continuity thats correct there are similar versions of it and when you look at those that control the development whether it is wise or pdf, theres a similar Genetic Network that gives rise as well. You can look at it to the level of the receptions themselves and how they duplicate and control and you can look at those that control the stuff and each shows the continuity that can happen to a. Saw them like the Calcium Carbonate and stuff like that others are hydroxy appetite. But when you look at the first skeletal tissue, it is an open question whether the first skeletal tissue invertebrates like us to because when you look at the first, they tend to look a lot like teeth and it looks like the first were armored on the outside of the body in common in the fossil record if you look at it under a microscope it was on the outside of the body and then whatever the developmental process was on the outside so we see armor and that is the outside hypothesis so it was interesting to. Embedded in that question its antecedents to consciousness. You know where im going to go with this the answer is yes. They have a version of consciousness. The there was a study out of the universituniversity about six yo that showed pretty clearly wrapped in a certain regime showed empathy for those that are suffering and its not just caring for them but its empat empathy. A for the title it was a best seller about how versions of the own mental state and consciousness. Following is a preview to be vegetarian i flirt with vegetarian, presbyterian, vegan all the time in the field. There are different stages that are vegetarian and then they go back and forth. How far back in time could this go . I would take it all the way ba back. Also once they duplicate you can repurpose. Its taking two different parts, one plus one makes for and that happens a lot. Repurposing and recombining these are all the pieces i would say they were part we are done with questions. Host thank you so much for being here with us and thank you everybody else for joining in this evening. You can find many more just like it on the website town hall seattle. We hope you will consider making a donation as your support will allow us to provide events just like this one this evening. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of the book some Assembly Required you can use the link on the page to purchase at third place books and finally thank you again for being here tonight. Stay safe and have a great evening. The. It is incredibly important. And the question that i use what is surveillance capitalism and what is your definition . Lets start with that. So to give a tiny bit of context it has long been understood in the history of capitalism that key way that capitalism evolves is by taki