The Assistant Professor of Biology, Professor Suegene Noh, gave us a talk on the evolution of genome shape through the observance of the social amoeba dicoideum. Professor Noh referred to them as “dicty” for short and explained them as unicellular organisms. These amoebas have the ability to aggregate and form mounds, this process allows the amoeba to then take form and eat bacteria. The organisms that have singular and muticellular life stages have the ability to bond together with other singular organisms to become stronger and more resilient. The bonding just described can also have some detriments to the organisms. When two genetically different cells inhabit the same body, the interest of each cell is inherently different and thus causes a conflict of sorts. Unlike Human cells, which are identical, these cells behave differently then the normally developed cells. The fruiting bodies that Professor Noh describes all contain multiple types of dicty, all of which she used in her research.
Professor Noh talked about the work that she did in her lab like comparing the dicty genes to those of fruiting bodies made up of one strain of dicty, also known as clonal genes. Noh was able to use an Illumina Cell machine to sequence the entire genome of dicty mounds by pairing wild dicty strains. She used 4 different pairs to conduct this sequence and found that in the chimeric samples, they would produce more or less of a gene compared to the clonal samples. There were a few regulated genes within the chimera samples that were involved in the creation of the fruiting body and larger, the AMP response, which is vital to the life of the dicty. The changes that were observed during the study show that the chimeric genes ultimately helped the fruiting body to survive due to its higher fitness when compared tot he clonal samples.
The next example that Professor Noh used to observe the effects of social conflicts between the dicty and their evolution. In this observation, Noh discussed three different types of microbes that infect the dicty. Once infected, the dicty can no longer form into the fruiting bodies that are crucial for their survival. The three microbes, agricolaris, bonniea, and hayleyella all interact and affect the dicty in different ways. However, over time, the dicty have been able to evolve through social conflict with these microbes. I thought that this talk was very interesting and really dove into the depths of cellular research. Because this is quite a complex topic, I found it difficult to follow along with everything going on but nonetheless enjoyed the things that I did understand. If I could provide some constructive criticism, I would try to simplify a topic like dicty and microbe interaction to the most basic form ever. If the audience isn’t able to grasp what is being talked about from the beginning, it becomes increasingly harder to understand the intricacies and inner-workings of the topics being described. I wished I understood the talk more but I did enjoy the parts that I understood.