Things You Didn't Know

Patricia J. Wittkopp is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She got her Ph.D. in 2002 with Sean Carroll.

Anything found to be true of E. coli must also be true of elephants.

-Jacques Monod (1954)Wittkopp has just published a paper in PLoS Biology: Variable Transcription Factor Binding: A Mechanism of Evolutionary Change. The second paragraph tells you something you didn't know.

During the last decade, researchers have discovered that the collection of proteins found in different animals is remarkably similar. In fact, many proteins are found not only in animals, but also in fungi and plants; some are even shared with bacteria. This unexpected—and truly astounding—finding has changed scientists' thinking about how biological diversity evolved ...

Isn't that cool? Before 1990, researchers didn't know that many animal proteins had homologs in fungi, plants, and even (gasp!) bacteria.

I presume she means that she didn't know this because she was still in high school.

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