Professor Noh’s presentation: “How current genomes are shaped by evolutionary pasts” was interesting and insightful. It is always a treat to have Colby professors lead these lectures, especially when it is a professor that Ihave never had any contact with. I have never taken a biology course at Colby so it was nice to hear from someone that I am so far removed from. That being said, since I have never taken biology class at Colby and the last time I took biology was early high school, I had a hard time following along. She broke down some of the terminology, however there was still many concepts that I did not understand and had trouble wrapping my head around. I probably should have asked some questions, however I was at that point where I had so many little questions that I couldn’t even come up with an insightful question to ask.
I must say, it must be difficult for Professor Noh to create a presentation for students and faculty that have little to no experience in biology. In most places where she presents her work, I’m sure she has a group of biology students and faculty who are very well aware of the implications of her research and the background knowledge to understand the research. This, however, was different in the fact that she had a room full of mixed majors, many humanities, and many students who have never taken a biology or similar course at Colby. So, being that she was able to share her research with us and us understand it (for the most part) was very impressive, and I am in awe of that skill.
One topic she brought up was how competition between amoebas drive a genetic modification and affects evolution. Although I was unfamiliar with amoebas, I found it interesting when she related it to social conflict, a topic that I do talk about often in my sociology and education classes. She discussed how social conflict within the body changes how amoebas form, creating different DNA sequences. Since I had a hard time picturing what was happening in the body with these small organisms, I pictured this in the way that I knew how to understand it, with social groups in a society.
Although I had trouble following along, I thought it was intriguing that this research she was doing, which would typically be considered a hard science, can be translated to humanities. Many of our other lectures have been clear social science and literary studies topics, but this biology discussion was also related in the fact that it supported evolution and changes over time. She discussed just how adaptive organisms can be to their environments, such as dicty changing in size over a small period of time. Although this is very different, our last lecture also discussed how species can adapt to their environments, but that talk being humans and this being much much much smaller organisms. Still, it relates, and comparing and contrasting all the information from multiple lectures provides new insights to these ideas that we are learning throughout the semester.