In last week’s lecture in the series: A Presence of the Past, Professor Suegene Noh gave a speech titled, “How Current Genomes are Shaped by Evolutionary Pasts”. A biology professor at Colby, Professor Suegene had a lecture much unlike many of the previous in the series. As other students have already noted concerning the methodology of the lecture, it was quite different from what we have seen already. Grounded in hard science and in a field that many in the lecture seem to have been well versed in (professors included), Professor Suegene still did a great job to ensure that those with less of a background in biology still had access to the material by means of thorough explanations when using technical jargon.
While I was unfamiliar with much of this topic prior to the lecture, and also would not consider myself proficient at all when it comes to the sciences, Professor Suegene brought up points about amoeba competition that connected more towards society than anything else even though the argument itself was based in hard science. It was interesting to consider that even at the smallest levels of life on this planet (ones at which the human eye cannot even see), there are some similar dynamics to the ones we see between individuals as well as communities in larger life forms.
Being in a field (art history) which focuses more on careful looking and research rather than experimentation, it was particularly interesting for me to learn a bit more about the research that Professor Suegene is conducting concerning dicty. It was incredible to learn about the adaptable nature of dicty, especially when considering the extent at which we have questioned humanities ability to adapt to other versions of change (both positive and negative) that we see in the current global scope.
One element of the speech that I found particularly interesting was Professor Suegene’s notation of the idea of “strength in numbers”. Thinking about the positive element of this idea when considering the research being done by Professor Suegene, it is also interesting and important to think of the negative ways this idea has come up in some of the past lectures. Even lectures concerning climate change and the detrimental changes to our environment that have been seen over the past decade, we can acknowledge ways in which the presence (or lack thereof) of numbers has changed the eventual outcome that the past has had on the presence. Also, notable, was the idea that social pressures influence even the most basic forms of biological life. As touched upon by classmates, this brings upon the conversation regarding the ability of genes to undergo changes due to social pressures. While this idea is remarkable to think about, when reflected upon it really does make sense and Professor Seugene is correct in noting that it is often acts of social oppression that result in dominant changes to certain life forms genes. Overall, while much of the hard science made this lecture a bit more difficult to follow, the points regarding the biological processes of the past affecting the present rang true and stayed very in line with the topic of our lecture series.