Fruit flies, like humans, carry a lot of recessive deleterious alleles.  When wild chromosomes are made homozygous there is a dramatic loss of fitness.  We have been curious about the effects of this and Louis Boell aggressively inbred wild caught Drosophila melanogaster for a few generations by reestablishing the line from single females each generation.  Not only did we see a change in behavior of the flies, several mutant phenotypes appeared, more than I expected.  (We also carefully measured changes in wing morphology during several generations of inbreeding, to compare to Louis' results comparing wild and lab mice jaw morphology, but saw no significant effect.)  Myles Tabios, a biology major and former student of my BIOL375 Genetics class, investigated one of these mutants in the lab and discovered it was a new allele of a gene called sepia (which encodes a PDA synthase enzyme) by a classical genetic complementation test.  Then he designed his own PCR primers,  sequenced the gene and found the mutation results from a 40 base pair deletion that completely disrupts the gene sequence.  I checked the Bloomington Stock Center (that maintains mutant Drosophila stocks as a resource for genetics researchers) and they only have one sepia allele: sepia[1], the first allele discovered in Morgan's lab in the 1920's.  Until now sepia[1] was also the only allele that was described on a molecular level.  I contacted them and said that we likely have an amorph (a completely non-functional allele) and they are interested in adding it to the collections!  They try to maintain at least two amorphs of each gene for testing...  I sent them the stock and the allele, sepia[Kiel] (the allele originated from a wild population in Kiel, which incidentally is where Drosophila melanogaster was first described by Meigen---but that is a different story), has now showed up in the newest version of flybase (link).

It's nice to have a study that initially found no positive result (no change in morphology with inbreeding) to end up resulting in a lasting impact no matter how small it might be.

For the last six months we have been trying to get Culex mosquitoes to breed in the lab so we can establish stable lab populations isolated from wild Hawaiian Culex.  As mosquitoes go, Culex are notoriously difficult to rise in the lab.  (In contrast, Aedes albopictus, the "tiger mosquito," are comparatively easy, almost trivial, to raise.)  We tried lots of approaches the past six months.  We caught wild larvae and brought them into the lab to raise.  We were quickly able to get the larvae to live but we could not get the adults to feed.   Then we figured that out but they would die quickly, after a couple days.  It took us a long time to troubleshoot that but we seem to have finally hit on the trick.  ...then we could not get them to mate and lay eggs.  We brought in egg rafts from the wild (Culex lay their eggs in a floating cluster called an egg raft) to drive the numbers in the cage up but nothing seemed to work...  A large part of my recent trip to NCSU last month was to ask for advice on how to raise Culex.  We incorporated this with some new things we were able to come up with and it looks like it is finally paying off!  I am not putting all the details here (although that is my first impulse) because we are planning to publish the new tricks we discovered as a methods paper.  Part of the frustration along the way is that we want to ultimately be able to genetically modify the mosquitoes; but this is useless if we can't maintain the modification for more than a single generation.  Now that we have complete lab generation cycles we can allow the mosquitoes to adapt to the lab for a few generations to optimize everything before starting genetic modifications with microinjections of plasmids.

Long story short, we have our first egg rafts from lab reared mosquitoes today!  This morning it was one and now we have two!  They are normal size like wild rafts.  They should hatch in the next 24 hours...

After NCSU in Raleigh (which by-the-way I should say it felt strange to be back in the east coast in March with near freezing temperatures, etc.) I was off on an overnight flight to London Heathrow then to Stockholm to a conservation genomics workshop (link) organized by Aaron Shafer and Jochen Wolf of Uppsala University.  A man was waiting for me at the airport with my name on a card as soon as I walked out.  He drove me out into the country to the place the workshop would be held for the next few days.  The location was amazing and the most surreal aspect for me in the rapid transition from Hawai'i.  It was a medieval mansion/castle (Wiks slott) in a rural Scandinavian farm and forest landscape.  After arriving it started snowing and several inches accumulated.  We all stayed on site so there was no travel back and forth to the nearest town.  We ate meals in a lower floor with long tables, small barred windows set deep into thick walls, and arched walls and ceilings.  I soon discovered the castle had hidden passage ways, suits of armor, etc!  I also had jet lag so in the middle of the night I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk, and to top it off there was a full moon hanging over the castle!

The point of the workshop was to discuss if there was a general reason to include new genome level technologies (versus classical molecular genetics of a few loci) in species conservation genetic applications.  The discussions and presentations were a lot of fun and I'm hopeful some impact will come of it. It was also nice to be back in Europe after being away for 2 1/2 years.  There are lots of things I like about Europe and I was a bit homesick.  It was also fun to listen to and read Swedish and to try to decipher the meanings.  I was surprised that I could recognize some words based on their similarity to German and/or English.

Finally a small world note.  I already knew Jochen Wolf, one of the organizers, because we worked at the same institute in Germany before he moved to Sweden and I moved to Hawai'i.  Also, the other organizer Aaron Shafer was at the same institute in Canada with Jolene Sutton who is working here on the mosquito/avian malaria project.

That was a whirlwind trip.  It was very surreal to be on a tropical island one day and in a castle in Sweden set in a snowy landscape on another day.  First of all I want to post the slides for my presentation at NCSU in Raleigh, my first stop.  Here is a link to my presentations page.  At NCSU I was asked to include some background on the social landscape here in Hawai'i as it pertains to genetic pest management.  This is something I am trying to get my head around so I presented my understanding at this point---how GMO crops and classical biocontrol (which genetic pest management tends to be initially compared to) are connected to issues of sovereignty and self determination in Hawai'i.  I also wanted to make the point---and was able to discuss this point to a great extent---that we tend to only think of regulatory and research funding agencies and labs doing research as the major players and tend to forget about the public until a technology is ready for deployment (then it is too late to make major changes and we tend to try to convince the public to accept what we have already decided).  I met with a lot of people and got a lot of good feedback, from techniques to raise and work with Culex mosquitoes in the lab to embedding non-biologists in the group for feedback on social issues to shape the ongoing research program.

NCSU has an NSF IGERT program to focus on cross disciplinary genetic pest management (link).  I was able to meet with a lot of people in this program during the visit.  At the moment the current cohort of students is focused on invasive mice on islands and ways to suppress the population.  They are doing some pretty exciting stuff.

Sorry, I've been really bad about making posts over the last few months.  Mostly this is because I am teaching two new classes this semester and it has taken a lot of my time.  However, this week I am traveling!  First to visit NCSCU and then to a Conservation Genomics workshop in Uppsala.  I will post updates about each in the next few days.

Towards the end of the semester I asked my students for their recommendation on extra credit reading assignments next year.  Here is a plot of their response with books that were suggested by two or more students (single entries, which were slightly more than a quarter of the total response, are grouped together).

The large number of students that recommended The Selfish Gene by Dawkins surprised me.  Actually it makes me a bit suspicious that they are already reading this for another class...  The four next most popular books are ones that were options this year, so I suspect they are a bit inflated, but are still good books that are relevant to genetics.  Controlling Human Heredity by Paul is also one that was among the options this year but it was not recommended as highly--it was dry and less enjoyable to read, but I still think it is an important book for them to be exposed to (the history of eugenics programs in the United States).  Still, the students have helped me identify several books that I can take a closer look at for reading options in class next year.

Here are some of the single entry student recommendations that caught my attention (this is not an endorsement for or against):

Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food by Daniel Charles

Genetically Modified Athletes: Biomedical Ethics, Gene Doping and Sport : by Andy Miah

Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling  by Jay Aronson

Evolution: Making Sense of Life by Carl Zimmer and Douglas Emlen

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard by Nora Ellen Groce

Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project by T. Spencer Wells

Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project by Spencer Wells

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane

Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi

Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany by Horst Biesold and Henry Friedlander

Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity by Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince

Invasion of the Genes: Genetic Heritage of India by B. S. Ahloowalia

The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black

The Family that Couldn't Sleep: D.T. Max

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B. Carroll

The Genetics Revolution: History, Fears, and Future of a Life-Altering Science by Rose Morgan

The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner and Robert A. Weinberg

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter

The Ethics of Genetic Engineering by Roberta M. Berry

Is It in Your Genes?: The Influence of Genes on Common Disorders and Diseases that Affect You and Your Family... by Philip R. Reilly

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

Abraham Lincoln's DNA and Other Adventures in Genetics by Philip R. Reilly

Final grades for the semester were due on Christmas Eve the 24th, and I had students calling me on my office phone and emailing me to ask about their grades up until the last minute on the afternoon of the 24th.  Then I was looking forward to a much needed break and went fishing with a video camera.  I'll try adding one of the videos here. It is down-sampled a bit to reduce the file size online.  This is a video of a Mokuleia tidepool on O'ahu.

You can clearly see three (?) fish species.  I am not a marine biologist (this is also part of a personal project on my part to learn more about marine natural history here in Hawai'i), so be suspicious of my attempts at identification.  I am fairly certain that two of the species are sharnosed mullets (Neomyxus leuciscus, uouoa in Hawaiian)--the larger long ones--and (juvenile)

blackspot sergeants (Abudefduf sordidus, Kūpīpī)--the ones with false "eye spots".

I suspect that flagtails are also present (Kuhlia spp., ʻāholehole) and the most common in this video, but I am less confident about their identification (see the update below, these are actually reticulated flagtails, Kuhlia sandvicensis).  There are also two brief glimpses of a third species that I suspect is a "rockskipper" zebra blenny.

If this works well then I will try uploading some more videos.

-----

I sent a picture of the flagtail from the video to some of my coworkers to ask about its identification.

Dr. Kathleen Cole wrote this in reply:

Hi Floyd.
This looks more like the reticulated flagtail, Kuhlia sandvicensis (also referred to as aholehole). It has a broader distribution than K. xenura, the latter of which is an endemic. Distinguishing features include a pale gray rather than dark grey tail, sometimes with a pale margin (which shows up in your picture), and a flattish, rather than slightly concave, head profile. The eye tends to be smaller in sandvicensis, but that doesn't help much unless you have the two species side by side.
Juveniles of both species are found in shallow coastal waters and tide pools so are easy to encounter.
Kassi

I also came across an article about the flagtails in Hawai'i that discusses some of the difficulties and confusion in distinguishing between them.

This is something that I have struggled with for a long time and that has puzzled me.  How do people keep up with email?  I have tried all sorts of strategies.  I have over 200 students in my class this semester so I ask them to put the class code in the subject line to filter those to one folder.  I use completely different email addresses for work and family and typically do not use my work email when at home and vice versa.  I have a filter for people within the department that goes to another folder.  However, I am still way behind even just sifting through all the messages and keep missing important ones.  Here is a cropped screenshot of the times emails have come in between 10:00am and 10:30am this morning, and this is only for filtered emails within the department.

In this example, I am getting an important email every five minutes; these are from different people about different things.  Also, I did not cherry pick this; I'm sure if I searched I could find a denser set of messages.  It feels like as soon as I reply to one another one comes in.  And, this is not including the several phone calls and several people that stopped by my office this morning as well.  If replying to people was my only job I could keep up with it but it is not.  I have to prepare for class, grade exams, apply for grants, not to mention work in the lab, etc.

I know I am just complaining but I honestly don't see how people can keep up and still get everything else done.

-----

Update: A busy morning (Dec. 3).  I couldn't resist a screenshot of my inbox times.  (I can't wait for the semester to be done.)  ... I was interrupted by six people coming by my office before I finished posting this.

A year or two ago I wrote a letter of recommendation for grad school for a former student of my genetics class.  Last week they wrote me back and told me about their climate change manuscript (link) that was accepted for publication in Nature.  The publication was also picked up by the media.

Here is the message:

Cheers,"

It feels wonderful to get this kind of positive feedback from students from time to time.  In everyday teaching of a class it often feels like everyone is unhappy because you tend to only hear from the small fraction of students that complain.

Last Friday the lead author, Dr. Camilo Mora, gave a presentation on the work in our joint department seminar series.  Most climate change predictions focus on the dramatic increase in temperature in the polar regions--and indeed this is where the largest temperature changes are expected to occur.  But this is not the full picture.  One question is how long until we will experience unprecedented change that is outside the range of previous temperatures.  It turns out that this is predicted to happen first in the tropics, because the tropics have such stable temperatures, a smaller change can push the climate outside of the normal historical boundaries.  The problem is that tropical species and environments cannot handle temperature changes as well as temperate and polar species, because they have not had to adapt to wide swings of temperature in the past.  Another problem is that tropical countries tend to have less economic resources to deal with these changes.  The predictions for "climate departure" for some of the tropics are surprisingly near with some dates as soon as 2020.

Dr. Mora was able to do this as a student class project and with very little resources available, using a lot of free tools and data available online.

Here are some news links:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-sci-climate-change-tropics-20131010,0,482935.story

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/no-year-after-2047-will-be-cool-now

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/science/earth/by-2047-coldest-years-will-be-warmer-than-hottest-in-past.html?_r=0

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-10-09/national/42849788_1_climate-change-intergovernmental-panel-global-ecology

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4389/20131009/places-earth-experience-radically-different-climate-2047.htm

http://www.weather.com/news/climate/2047-coldest-years-may-be-warmer-hottest-past-20131009

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/world-temperatures-go-off-the-chart-by-2047-study-says-1.2053488

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131009133216.htm

We had an exam yesterday in my genetics class.  During the exams I project the official time for Hawai'i on the screen so that my students can easily see how much time they have left.  However, because of the budget negotiation failure and partial government shutdown, the website I usually use was not available.  I projected it on the screen anyway.

And in the lower corner I opened the computer's clock settings so they could see that instead.  I announced that the government may be shutdown but we are not, so we are still having the exam today.  I also added that they may want to contact their representatives.