OEB 192 – Dynamics of adaptation

*Wednesday* (10/14): Repeatability

1. Origins Forum: Date: Wednesday 10/7 Time: 4:00PM Speaker: Steven Benner Title: The Role of Planet Earth in Life's Origins Location: Biological Laboratories Lecture Hall, 16 Divinity Ave., Rm Microbial Science Initiative Seminar Doyle Ward The Broad Institute “The Long Tail of the Human Microbiome and Other Short Stories” Thursday Oct. 8 6PM Location: Center for the Environment (Rm 310) 24 Oxford St, Harvard University, Cambridge Please join us for a wine and cheese reception at 5:30 pm - MSI Seminar Schedule: Directions to 24 Oxford St: 3. Systems Biology Theory Lunch HMS, Alpert Building, Room 563 at 12 noon, unless otherwise stated further information from jeremy at hms.harvard.edu Friday 9 Oct 2009 Uri Alon Evolution of modularity in biologyUri Alon

4. The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics presents: Professor Lord (Robert) May of Oxford when: 3:00pm Friday 9th October 2009 where: Harvard University Science Center lecture hall A map: Robert McCredie May, Lord May of Oxford, OM AC Kt FRS, holds a Professorship jointly at Oxford University and Imperial College, London and is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He was until recently President of The Royal Society ( ), and before that Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology ( ). His career includes a Personal Chair in Physics at Sydney University aged 33, Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology at Princeton, and in 1988 a move to Britain as Royal Society Research Professor. Particular interests include how dynamical systems are structured and respond to change, particularly with respect to infectious diseases and biodiversity. Honours include: the Royal Swedish Academy’s Crafoord Prize, the Swiss-Italian Balzan Prize, the Japanese Blue Planet Prize, and the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, its oldest (1731) and most prestigious award. “Stability and complexity in model banking systems.” The recent banking crises have made it clear that increasingly complex strategies for managing risk in individual banks and investment funds (pension funds, etc) has not been matched by corresponding attention to overall systemic risks. Simple mathematical caricatures of “banking ecosystems”, which capture some of the essential dynamics and which have some parallels (along with significant differences) with earlier work on stability and complexity in ecological food webs, have interesting implications. In particular, strategies that tend to minimise risk for individual banks can – under certain circumstances – maximise the probability of systemic failure. This talk will first sketch these models and the ensuing conclusions.

5. OEB Special Seminar: “Symbioses and Early Prokaryotic Evolution” James A. Lake Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology Department of Human Genetics University of California, Los Angeles Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. Biological Laboratories Main Lecture Hall, Room Divinity Avenue HOST: Hartl Lab Abstract: Endosymbioses have dramatically altered eukaryotic life, but are thought to have negligibly affected prokaryotic evolution. By analyzing the flows of protein families, evidence is presented indicating that the double membrane, Gram negative, prokaryotes were formed as the result of a symbiosis between an ancient actinobacterium and clostridium. This extraordinarily successful taxon has profoundly altered the evolution of life by providing endosymbionts necessary for the emergence of eukaryotes and by generating Earth’s oxygen atmosphere. Their double membrane architecture and the observed genome flows into them suggest a common evolutionary mechanism for their origin: an endosymbiosis between a clostridium and actinobacterium.