Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- What are your 'thinking genes' doing in a plant?
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Edgar Spalding, UW Department of Botany
- Abstract: It's hard to keep an open mind. If we don't shut down some possibilities, create certain boundaries, we'd never get anywhere through thought. But it's easy to go overboard and start throwing up blocks and dividers left and right to keep things simple and manageable. Excesses in this coping method inevitably run afoul of new facts and findings and then hindsight shows its waste. My presentation will be a story that exemplifies this folly of ours. The protagonist is a group of genes encoding protein molecules known as glutamate receptor channels. In our brains, they play fundamental signal-transmitting roles, chemically connecting one neuron to another. Their properties make learning and other higher cognitive functions possible. If ever there could be a molecule that sets sentient beings like us apart from the rest of the living world, the glutamate receptor channels might be it. So what on earth are genes encoding these 'molecules for thinking' doing in the DNA of plants? We have been researching this question with genetics, electrophysiology, and computerized image analysis. I will describe some of the progress we have made and what we may risk by letting conventional wisdom about plants and animals rule our thinking.