The New Zealand Edge : Heroes : Scientists : Allan Wilson



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	Allan Wilson
		Revolutionary Evolutionist
		Into Biochemistry
		The Molecular Clock
		Crop of Hybrids
		Evolutionary Bombshell
		Marvellous Legacy
		References
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Allan Wilson REVOLUTIONARY EVOLUTIONIST
One of the great innovators of science, New Zealander Allan Wilson revolutionised the study of human evolution. He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize and is the only New Zealander to win the prestigious US MacArthur "Genius" Award. Allan Wilson’s scientific achievements are nothing short of profoundly significant.	Allan Wilson

His investigations into the origins of humanity through biochemistry were revolutionary, yet at the time of his death in 1991 he was still a controversial figure. His theories on the evolution and age of modern humans still flew in the face of anthropological thinking of the time, not to mention inciting anger from American creationists.

After Wilson’s death Charles Laird published some thoughts on his lost colleague and friend. He examined his work and his personality and theorised about how the two combined:

"I have wondered about the parts of his personality that were so unusual even among first-rate scientists – his courage, his openness, his ability to focus on a problem and not let go, his special vision to see the final experiment and not to get distracted by intermediate ones and the details in between. Where did these traits come from? Do we learn them? If so can we learn them as young adults, or teach them to our children and students? Or do we have to learn them from our parents when we are young?"

Into Biochemistry
Allan Wilson was born in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand, and raised on a farm at Helvetia, Pukekohe. He attended King’s College in Auckland and excelled in maths and chemistry. After school he gained a BSc from Otago University. It was here as a Masters student that Wilson met Professor C.P. ‘Mac’ McMeekan, a New Zealand pioneer in soil and water science. He suggested that Wilson further his study in biochemistry instead of genetics.

In 1955 Wilson was invited to do his Ph.D at the University of California, Berkeley. His father was reluctant to let his son go to America, for fear that he would never return, but Wilson’s mother saw her son’s potential and persuaded her husband to let him go. At the time the family thought Allan would only be gone two years; instead he stayed at Berkeley for 35 years, setting up one of the world’s most creative biochemistry labs and turning ideas of evolution on their ear.

The Molecular Clock
Allan Wilson first came to world attention when he published a paper titled ‘Immunological Time-Scale For Human Evolution’ in Science magazine in December 1967. Together with doctoral student Vince Sarich, Wilson argued that the origins of the human species could be seen through, what he termed, a ‘molecular clock’. This was a way of dating, not from fossils, but from the genetic mutations that had accumulated since they parted from a common ancestor. The molecular clock estimated the length of time from divergence, given a certain rate of change.

When Wilson and Sarich analysed and compared genetic material from humans with chimpanzees they found the material to be 99 percent identical. From this, using the ‘molecular clock’ reasoning (bigger differences equate to greater time since their last common ancestor) they deduced that the earliest proto-hominids evolved only five million years old. This was fifteen million years younger than stated by conventional anthropology.

An obituary written by Joseph Felsenstein and published in Nature magazine describes how Wilson turned around, not only the study of molecular evolution, but also, the way it was studied:

"Systematists, microbiologists and biochemists came to Berkeley to learn the techniques involved. But Wilson’s influence went beyond this. While others concentrated on what evolution could tell them about molecules, Wilson always looked for ways that molecules could say something about evolution."

Berkeley in the 1960s was a hotbed of protest against the Vietnam War and the American military industrial establishment, and rife with academic liberalism. By all accounts Wilson was highly active in the tide of action sweeping the campus.

Crop of Hybrids
Yet it was in the lab where his influence was felt the strongest. The Wilson Lab at Berkeley pioneered new techniques such as the Polymerase Chain Reaction and the Relative Rate Test. These pushed the limits of DNA analysis to include extinct species. DNA samples from extinct species such as Moa and Tasmanian wolves were tested, as was fossil bacteria and tissue from a 7000 year old human brain.

In a feature on the relationship between molecular and evolutionary biology published in Science magazine, science writer Ann Gibbons recognises Wilson’s influence on modern scientific thought and practices through his teaching and his foresight to combine disciplines:

"The first recognised prototype of the molecular systematics lab was set up at Berkeley, where Wilson’s lab in the department of genetics collaborated with a wide array of faculty and other researchers on campus. And out of that lab – and others like it at Berkeley – came a crop of hybrids: graduate students trained in both systematics and molecular techniques who have seeded the combination around the world.

"At a celebration for the 25th anniversary of Wilson’s lab, former students jokingly showed a slide of a map of the world, showing the paths the Berkeley researchers have taken had taken to other molecular evolution labs around the world. You could trace Berkeley students and collaborators to brand new labs at Pennsylvania State University, Louisiana State University, the University of Hawaii, the Museo Nacional de Ciecias Naturales in Madrid, and the Smithsonian’s Museum of National History among others."

Despite Wilson’s molecular evidence being as strong as the conventional fossil evidence, he remained on the fringes of the anthropological community for the next twenty years. While this was definitely a case of academic politics and a demonstration of the difficulty of changing accepted norms, Wilson, according to accounts given by his team, appeared to relish his role as an outsider, an edge-dweller. He gathered the brightest students around him to test his theories on a multitude of plant and animal species.

Slowly through the 1970s his ideas gained credibility, and through the course of his career he was a visiting professor at Harvard, St Louis, Kansas, Carmel and MIT, and at universities in Israel and Kenya. He edited scientific magazines and journals including: Biochemical Genetics, Chemical Abstracts, Journal of Molecular Evolution, Journal of Human Evolution, Systematic Zoology and Geonomics.

Evolutionary Bombshell
In the early 1980s, as his findings for the age of the proto-humans were starting to be more widely accepted, Wilson again dropped a bombshell on traditional anthropological thinking.

In studying gene types he started to focus on mitochondria DNA (mDNA) - genes that sit in the cell, but not in the nucleus, and are passed from mother to child. This DNA is material important because it mutates quickly, thus making it easy to plot changes over relatively short time spans. By comparing differences in the (m)DNA Wilson believed it was possible to estimate the time, and the place, modern human first evolved. With his discovery that human mDNA is genetically much less diverse than chimpanzee mDNA, he concluded that modern human races had diverged recently from a single population while older human races such as Neanderthal, Java Erectus and Pekin Erectus had become extinct.

He and his team compared mDNA in people of different racial backgrounds and concluded that all modern humans evolved from one ‘lucky mother’ in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

This finding was as, if not more, controversial than his 1967 findings. Accepted thinking had various human groups evolving from different ancestors, over a million years in separate geographic regions, but at basically the same rate around the world. In Europe with Homo Sapien Neanderthals, in Indonesia with Java Man, in China with Peking Man. Again, like in the 1960s, many palaeontologists rejected Wilson’s conclusions; fossil scientists were unfamiliar with biochemistry and trusted their own data more than molecular data. It took 20 years to convince palaeontologists of the value of Wilson’s theory, but when they did, it married their science with that of genetics. It was Wilson’s legacy to turn genetics into a study of inherited traits to a biochemical science.

The media concerning this discovery initially offended the religious lobby. Time magazine ran the story as the ‘Black Eve Theory’; other magazines followed with headlines proclaiming ‘African Eve’ and other derivations.

The 'Out of Africa' theory is now the accepted account of modern human origins. Further computer analysis of mDNA data, studies of the male ‘Y’ chromosome (indicating a single male ancestor living in Africa around 270,000 years ago) and re-analysis of the original data show that European Neanderthal and Java Erectus are not ancestral to modern humans.

Allan Wilson died in 1991 in Seattle, aged 55, at the height of his career. He left behind a wife, son and daughter and, back in New Zealand, a mother, brother and sister. He had kept his New Zealand ties (his brother Gary donated bone marrow as part of Wilson’s leukaemia treatment). He also remained close to Otago University, addressing the graduates of 1988, returning the next year to teach, being awarded an honorary doctorate that year and being the recipient of the William Evans Fellow for science.

Marvellous Legacy
Many of his Berkeley students are at the forefront of biochemistry today. In a obituary written by British evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith and published in The Independent, Smith points out that Wilson’s teaching ability should be remembered as well as his theories:

"I find it impossible to write about Allan Wilson without, in fact, writing about his science, because his science was always such fun. He succeeded in passing on his enthusiasm, his open-mindedness, and his breadth of interest to a succession of young scientists who worked with him at Berkeley. They are a wonderful advertisement for Allan as a teacher: there is not a narrow-minded one among them. Evolutionary biology can ill-afford to do without him, but he has left us a marvellous legacy of ideas and a splendid group of students."

Thank you to Rowan Taylor for his comments and contributions. Rowan has contributed a comprehensive selection of articles, website references and list of papers by Allan Wilson and colleagues.

Sites which have linked to this page:

Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University, NZ. The centre was set up as part of the NZ Government's Centres of Research Excellence initiative and continues research into the stuff of our origins under the inspiration of Allan's example.

Askwhy.co.uk