Nils Christian Stenseth - The History of Modern Biology ｜ Mendel Festival 2021

Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you very much for the introduction. It is a great pleasure to be here. It is a great pleasure to be here to celebrate Mendel. Together with Darwin, Mendel, he changed the history of science. He made us understand how evolution is possible. He made us understand genetics, as you know. So this is really a celebration in honor of science, humanities and culture. As I said, thank you very much for inviting me. I guess I'm invited because I've been involved in organizing Darwin Day in Norway. And this, I understand, is a very good model of Darwin Day internationally. I'm very, very happy for the work you are doing in this respect. I'm here to talk about Mendel and Charles Darwin up until today. In short, I will be giving a history in less than half an hour of modern biology. The context is really this very century is the century of biology. The previous century is referred to very often as the century of physics. Physicists think that this century is still going to be the century of physics. They are wrong. This is the century of biology. Or I might say that this might be the century of biology. And it will be the century of biology if you are able to bring together evolution, ecology and genetics. And if you like, if you are able to bring together Darwin and Mendel. This is how we know about genetics today. This is the double helix, the genetic code. And today we can describe the whole genome, all the genetics in our body in a very, very short time and very easily. We are experiencing today, this last year, this last half year, we are experiencing that this is the century of biology with a vaccine. On January 11th, at the end of January 11th, the Chinese uploaded, made available to the rest of the world, the full genetic description of the COVID-19 virus. This was on January 11th, afternoon of Beijing time. Then, in the morning of January 11th, Washington time, US, Falke, the guy that always was put aside by Trump when they were having press conferences, he called upon his colleagues to discuss the genome information being made available, the genetics of the COVID-19 virus. And they understood that this is serious stuff, this is really dangerous stuff. But they also discussed, how can we combat this? And there and then, in this morning of January 11th, in Washington, at the National Institute of Health, they basically designed the vaccine we have today. Only a few days later, they had a contract made with Moderna, and now we know the end of that story. This is the century of biology. But it will be the century of biology if you are able to combine Darwin and Mendel. You have heard about this book, you have heard about this man. I'd like to give you a very, very short summary of his contribution to science. He understood how evolution was coming about, and the process of evolution. He said that if you have entities, individuals if you like, that has the following three characteristics. That they can reproduce, that they can reproduce more than is needed to replace themselves when they die. If they have heredity, that their offspring resemble themselves more than the offspring resembles any random person, or unit, or item, or what have you. And that there is variation in these heritable characteristics. Then there will be natural selection. Then the population, the collection of individuals, they will adapt to the environmental setting, to the background if you like. So if the background changes, then the kinds of individuals that are doing it good, surviving and reproducing the best, will change. Illustrated here with the background, yellow and blue. This is natural selection. This was what Darwin understood. But here is what Mendel understood. Darwin did not understand the process of heredity, not at all. And it worried him all his life. He understood that he did not understand it, which is fantastic in itself. That someone understands that they don't understand. But he tried out various mechanisms, and in short they were a mess. In short, evolution could not have happened if his various theories for heredity was the correct one. So he did not understand heredity. But he understood that the process of heredity was necessary in order for evolution to occur. This man, he was the one to understand heredity. And that started a fantastic development with Watson and Crick, publication in 1953, for which they got the Nobel Prize. And there has been many Nobel Prizes thereafter. I'm coming back to that in a short while. But let me have a very, very brief interlude here. Darwin understood that we need reproduction, variation, and heredity. Two weeks before Darwin died, he published a paper in Nature, a very fancy journal, an upper-class journal. One of the best ones in the world. All scientists, natural scientists, want to publish in that journal. He had a small paper there, about a bival cald, that he had gotten from Walter Drawbridge Crick. He was a British Midland shoemaker, and he is the grandfather of Watson Crick, that described the double helix in 1953, together with Watson. So there's a link between genetics and Mendel, and Darwin. And there's a very direct link through this man here. But back to Darwin and Mendel. I said, when I referred to the Nobel Prize that was awarded to Watson and Crick, I said that there were many other Nobel Prizes that had come following. And Paul Berg was one of them. There's a couple of others, which got the Nobel Prize twice. And he really was the start of genomics, really describing all genetics in an organism. And making the starting point for a fantastic technological development with these machines, that can read out all the genes. And this was a very prominent place in my heart. Because my good colleague back in Norway, Kjetil Jakobsen, he had been at a conference here in Germany. And he came back to me and said, he came back to Norway and he came into my office. I was the chair of the Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis at that time. And Kjetil, my colleague, geneticist, he said, I need such a machine. If I don't get such a machine, my whole scientific career will be destroyed. I said, how much does it cost? Five to seven million Norwegian kroner. Or five to seven hundred euro. I said, we don't have that money, leave my office. But then, a year or so after, there was an opportunity to apply for funding for getting such machines. And we got such a machine, and now we are heavily involved in this. And where we are. There was a mammological conference, a second international mammological conference was in Brno in 1978, I think it was. And a guy writing a textbook in genetics, he wanted to have a photo, and I was together with him. He wanted to have a photo of inside here. This was a Monday, so he was hammering the door, the museum was closed. He was hammering the door so much that the caretaker came and said, we are going to call the police. My friend, my American friend, I said, I only want a picture. And he got a picture. This is what Mendel did, he did this breathing experiment. And rather than me taking a lot of time explaining that, when you leave the room here, there are descriptions of this on the way out. Fantastic, very good descriptions actually. But this is an experiment that is very well known for. And that he published this paper. I was here a couple of years ago, I was here. And I was sitting in the library here. And I was shown by the father here. I was shown the manuscript, the original manuscript of Mendel. The first one. And I didn't really realize what I was having in front of me, until I saw what was written there. Which is this. Which is what you find in genetic textbooks. This was his manuscript. Fantastic. These two men have contributed a lot to us understanding how biology works. How evolution works. And how evolution can work through natural selection, when you have a geneticist like the one that Mendel described. That we today think about in this way. I'm now going to take you to a tour, a very brief tour, through the historical and conceptual development of biology. Let's take the historical first. It really starts with Darwin. And it ought to have been notified that this guy was coming shortly after Darwin. But he was forgotten. Until the Austrian biologist, August Weizmann, through the microscope, was able to see the nucleus in the cell. And got the idea that here might be the home of the heritage mechanism that Darwin, that Mendel had been talking about. So I believe that August Weizmann was preparing the ground for the world understanding, the scientific world understanding what Mendel had done and contributed with. But then at the turn of the century, they forgot about Darwin. They were really only concerned about genetics. And it was not before the 1930s that genetics and evolution were brought together again. I'm coming back to this very briefly in a very short while. Then the double helix. Then ecology was brought back into the theory. And we got a good fossil record. And there was done experimental work that Darwin finishes. Rosemary and Peter Grant was working on Galapagos. So we could use genetics to reconstruct the history of life. And we got the human genome. And we have genetics of almost anything now. Not quite, but almost anything. So let's now take the conceptual history or development of biology. These two guys are the obvious starting point. And when I give a talk focusing on Darwin, I have exactly the same. And when I give a talk focusing on Mendel, I have exactly the same. Because they are together. They have together made biology and science. But it was a microscope and August Weismann that really made a change. Then we got the DNA structure. We got these machines. Five to seven million that I had to pay. Now they are cheaper. And revolutionized individual focused biology, medicine, modern medicine. We can do things now in medicine that we couldn't even dream of a couple of decades ago. Only one day. Lemon is a favorite animal of mine. My doctoral degree was on that one actually. It was a Norwegian scientist that wrote a book about those animals. Those are the ones that flocked up and down. Peak years, crashes. Walt Disney has made a movie of it. Charles Elton. He came across this Norwegian book by Robert Collet about lemmings. He did not understand Norwegian. He didn't read Norwegian. But he bled it through the book. And saw this regularity. This must be interesting. So he bought the book. In 1923 he published what is the start of population biology in science. Natural selection. Ecology really drives natural selection. It's the biological interaction that is important. And then you get evolution. Which is also, has been very important in medical work. Because there's lots of organisms within us. Virus. Particularly bacteria. There's also bacteria in us. There's lots of evolution going on there. And we have medicine. And the bacteria is responding to the medicine. Now we get vaccine for COVID-19 virus. COVID-19 is responding to what we are doing to them now. And very few people are thinking about this, unfortunately. But whenever evolution occurs, then it feeds back to ecology. The interaction between organisms. So this is my conceptual description of biology today. And I highlighted already Elton. I'll say a few words about him. I have one slide about him. This is when he lived. British zoologist. Oxford. He really started the field of population biology. The empirical population biology. Started at an institute in Oxford. And at Jordan. Which is really the starting point for population thinking. Darwin. He had always had a population thinking. Many individuals interacting. And out of this interaction comes natural selection. Of course Mendel also had a population thinking. In his mind. But there has been a fight over the years. Between the Mendel way of thinking. Genetics. And the Darwin way of thinking. Natural selection. This was. And as I said before. We need to bring them together. If this is going to be the century of biology. And there is no Nobel Prize in evolutionary biology. But there is a Crawford Prize. And these three authors were awarded a Crawford Prize in 1999. For really creating a platform. For developing a concept of evolutionary biology. Where both Mendel and Darwin played key roles. And I will give the main honor to George Williams. Who wrote a book in 1966. Really bringing this thing back together. Because at the turn of the century. The previous century. Population biology had with Mendel. Left biology. It essentially disappeared. Particularly after the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics. It was opposing views. Either those that believed in Darwin. Or those that believed in Mendel. They were fighting. Because that is two sides of the same coin. And those two views were brought together. In the period 1920 or 1930. I would like to highlight Ronald Fisher. He was really the founder of modern biology. As well as modern statistics. Fantastic guy. He was an obnoxious person. His wife was always shining up his shoes in the morning. One day she hadn't shined up his shoes. And he left. He asked her to leave the house immediately. It's a true story. But J.B.S. Holder and a mathematician. Biologists also. They brought ecology back into evolutionary thinking. And population thinking into biology. So here are some of the main figures in the more recent history. Ronald Fisher. The statistician. John Maynard Smith. A very good friend of mine. Very important to many people. Many young people. And Lee Van Veen. Paleontologist. That made us emphasize that most of an environment. Of any individual's environment. Is other individuals. And you have to interact with them. And you have to do it as good as you possibly can. In order to get access to the resources. I've seen this before. This is really. If you are able to bring all this together. This will be the century of biology. And we must not forget population thinking. Indeed. We should be very, very careful to bring all these elements. Darwin. Elton, if you like. You might ask. Why have I not mentioned Linnaeus? I don't know how I mentioned him. He classified the organisms out there. He classified them. By looking at similarities. But he had no. There was no change. Changing. It was like it was out there. And had been all along. It was Darwin. That made us understand. How this evolution came about. And that we could really look upon the changes over time. And so to reconstruct. And understand. Why some type of individuals do it better than others. But it was Mendel. Played a key role here. Remember. Darwin understood that heredity was essential. But it did not understand. How it came about. It was Mendel. This man. That made us understand that. I will come to an end now. But through my talk I've been sort of discussing. Darwin on one side. Mendel on another. I'm either a Darwinist. Or I'm a Mendelist. Whereas I might. And I should be both. But science today is very fragmented. We need to counteract this fragmentation. We need to pursue interdisciplinarity. Whenever appropriate for answering the scientific questions being asked. Science today is like this. We are. Each of our disciplines. We are marching in our trenches. Not really looking to the other trenches. We are reading different genres. We are reading different books. We are going to different conferences. If we go to the same conference. We are going to different sections. Parallel sessions. We don't interact in science today. Across borders. Evolutionary biology, Darwinists. They go off by themselves. Geneticists go off by themselves. We need to be unified. We don't. Here are different disciplines. Trying to blend blind bands. Trying to understand what they have in front of them. And they come up with very different answers. We need to bridge the gaps between ecology and evolution. Between Darwin and Mendel if you like. This is how we should be together. We should work in each disciplines. But also come together. Not only a conference where we have champagne parties. We should come together and work together. And this should not be the situation. That we work independently and don't really read each others. This is the century of biology. This will be the century of biology. If we bring on board both Darwin and Mendel. And population biology. So we need to unify biology. In order to understand the complex biology out there. This is the century of biology. Modern biotechnology. Modern agriculture would be impossible. Without natural selection. Or artificial selection if you like. And Mendel. Fishery, aquaculture and medicine. So let's have this as sort of the view. Of what biological insight do to the production of food. For animal or people. That is the result of the thinking of Gregor Mendel. That it did on the basis of experimental work it did. Out in the greenhouse. That unfortunately blew down some years ago. But fortunately I hope will be reconstructed very soon. And Darwin. These are the founders of modern biology. Indeed it is all reason to honor Gregor Mendel. For his contribution to science, to humanities and culture. Thank you very much.