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Molecular Evolution in Historical Perspective

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Abstract

In the 1960s, advances in protein chemistry and molecular genetics provided new means for the study of biological evolution. Amino acid sequencing, nucleic acid hybridization, zone gel electrophoresis, and immunochemistry were some of the experimental techniques that brought about new perspectives to the study of the patterns and mechanisms of evolution. New concepts, such as the molecular evolutionary clock, and the discovery of unexpected molecular phenomena, like the presence of repetitive sequences in eukaryotic genomes, eventually led to the realization that evolution might occur at a different pace at the organismic and the molecular levels, and according to different mechanisms. These developments sparked important debates between defendants of the molecular and organismic approaches. The most vocal confrontations focused on the relation between primates and humans, and the neutral theory of molecular evolution. By the 1980s and 1990s, the construction of large protein and DNA sequences databases, and the development of computer-based statistical tools, facilitated the coming together of molecular and evolutionary biology. Although in its contemporary form the field of molecular evolution can be traced back to the last five decades, the field has deep roots in twentieth century experimental life sciences. For historians of science, the origins and consolidation of molecular evolution provide a privileged field for the study of scientific debates, the relation between technological advances and scientific knowledge, and the connection between science and broader social concerns.

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Notes

  1. There is a growing historical literature on the development of databases and computer networks in biology. On the intersection between sequencing, databases, and computers see Garcia-Sancho (2011, 2012) and Stevens (2013). On the introduction of computers in biology, see De Chadarevian (2002) and November (2012).

  2. In the precipitin reaction, serum from one animal species, which had been previously injected with serum from another species, was made to react with serum from the second, or even a third species. The reaction formed a precipitate (therefore the name), and Nuttall devised quantitative and even quantitative methods to measure the “strength” of the reaction.

  3. The concept of metabolic pathways emerged one decade later, with the use of radioisotope tracers in the elucidation of the two phases of photosynthesis (Creager 2013).

  4. Historians of molecular biology have argued that the origins of the field reside in a complex process that transformed the professional identity of biophysicists (the name preferred by those working in Cambridge before 1962), biochemists (like Sanger), and protein chemists (like Anfinsen and Linus Pauling). Eventually, these approaches coalesced in “molecular biology,” a term coined in 1938 by Warren Weaver, head of the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (see De Chadarevian 1996).

  5. See De Chadarevian (1998) and Strasser (1999, 2002) for the context and impact of Pauling’s paper on molecular disease..

  6. On Pauling’s political activism see Goertzel and Goertzel (1995), Hager 2011, and Hamblin (2007).

  7. In consonance with contemporary views, Zuckerkandl and Pauling included an eugenic strategy to deal with the increased rate of mutation and disease in the atomic era (on Muller and Dobzhansky’s viewson the matter see Paul 1987, Beatty 1987, 1993).

  8. As Walter Fitch said one, the molecular clock “was a concept that floated in the air” (personal communication with the author, October 23rd, 1993). Indeed, Anfinsen’s monograph explores the basic idea that each protein, according to its functional constraints, has a characteristic rate of structural change.

  9. The term “sequenator” was used to describe any machine that sequenced the monomers in a polymer, either protein or DNA. In the late 1980s, efforts by Japanese scientists to develop automated DNA sequencers were also called “sequenators.” A complete account is given by Garcia-Sancho (2012). On automation, see Keating et al. (1999).

  10. Cavalli-Sforza and Edwards (1966, 1967) introduced distance matrix methods and parsimony into human evolutionary trees. They used blood groups geographical distribution data, and took advantage of recent developments in the electrophoretic analysis of blood components.

  11. The history of the introduction of computers in biology has been studied by Lenoir (1999), Hagen (2001), De Chadarevian (2002), November (2012), Strasser (2010b), Garcia-Sancho (2011, 2012), and Stevens (2013).

  12. Zuckerkandl was in good terms will all of them, though. He had met Mays in 1958 at te Roscoff Marine Station in France, where he worked back then. He remembered how Dobzhansky had approached him, after the Wenner-Gren Conference in Austria in 1964, and recognized the value of molecular data (personal communication with the author, Palo Alto, November 1993).

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank Antonio Lazcano-Araujo for his generous invitation to contribute to this volume. Research for this paper was supported by research Grants from Conacyt (Number 152879), and UNAM-PAPIIT (IN401017).

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    Edna Suárez-Díaz

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Suárez-Díaz, E. Molecular Evolution in Historical Perspective. J Mol Evol 83, 204–213 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-016-9772-6

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