Bernard A. Wood - US grants

9987590
Bernard Wood - George Washington University
IGERT: Integrative Human Evolutionary Biology

This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, graduate training program of education and research on human evolutionary biology. The Human Evolutionary Biology Doctoral Program (HEBDP) is a graduate program linking anthropology with molecular and organismal biology, chemistry, engineering and geology that promotes interdisciplinary research emphasizing experimental and comparative methods for studying human evolutionary history. HEBDP is a collaboration between George Washington University, Howard University, the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, and other Washington DC area researchers. The evidence for our species' evolutionary history is well studied and of unquestionable social and scientific importance. Yet, despite a wealth of fossil, archaeological, molecular, paleoecological and comparative data, issues as basic as hominid phylogeny, the evolution of bipedal locomotion, diet, language and cognition, and the effects of environmental change on human evolution, and vice versa, remain poorly understood. These gaps in our knowledge partly occur because few students are trained in the new range of analytical, experimental and conceptual skills needed to test evolutionary hypotheses. HEBDP will combine coursework with innovative problem-based learning seminars, internships and research to train students in new methods for studying our species' fossil, archaeological and genetic records. Because human evolutionary research has broad social and medical implications, HEBDP includes training in skills required for the effective public dissemination of science.

IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing new, innovative models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the third year of the program, awards are being made to nineteen institutions for programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. The intellectual foci of this specific award reside in the Directorates for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences; Biological Sciences; Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Engineering; Geosciences; and Education and Human Resources.

The size and organization of the cerebral cortex has played a fundamental role in studies of human and primate brain evolution. Yet little information exists about the cerebral cortex in modern humans and closely related ape species. Differences between the modern human cortex and that of the usual primate model, the macaque, have largely been ignored by the neurosciences, and there is a dearth of useful comparative data.
This dissertation research project will study functionally distinct, hierarchically organized, cerebral cortical areas involved in the processing of visual information. These cortical areas, which make up the visual cortex, comprise the largest sensory domain of the primate cerebral cortex. Visual areas will be investigated across modern humans, apes and Old World monkeys. The student will use modern microanatomical techniques to identify and describe visual areas according to consistent quantitative and qualitative microanatomical criteria. Detailed cortical maps will be generated for each species investigated. Visual area volumes will be estimated for each specimen. The data obtained during the course of the study will provide a framework for further research on the higher primate visual cortex. Specific questions about brain organization and behavior will also be addressed. For example, the study will test the hypothesis that the human lineage has experienced a unique increase in the proportion of visual cortex that is allocated to higher level processing.
Important broader impacts of the new data generated here are 1) information about the visual cortices of apes will be made available for the first time, 2) they will enable human and monkey visual areas to be interpreted within a phylogenetic perspective, and, 3) the data will improve our understanding of how modern human visual areas should be defined. The database created by this project, including images and comparative descriptions of visual areas, will be made available on a website. Researchers from diverse fields will be able to use this information to locate these visual areas in studies of higher primate brains. These data will also make it possible to determine genetic profiles of specific cortical areas, and then compare these profiles across higher primate species. Finally, this project will encourage interdisciplinary science by enabling a physical anthropologist to become trained in neurobiological laboratory techniques.

This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award focuses on the evolution of the human brain, cognition, and related behavioral responses to environmental change. The program integrates cross-disciplinary research training in a unique mix of disciplines, namely archeology, biomechanics and engineering, cognitive science, comparative and experimental functional morphology, ecology, evolutionary and developmental biology, genetics, geochemistry, morphometrics, life history, molecular biology, neuroscience, and paleoclimatology. Innovative educational and training aspects include an emphasis on collaboration via group problem-based learning approaches, required laboratory rotations in two different disciplines, and seminars in ethics and professional conduct. The program combines George Washington University?s PhD program in Hominid Paleobiology with the Howard University PhD in Physiology and Biophysics, together with faculty from the Smithsonian Institution and Johns Hopkins University?s Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, The collaboration with Howard University (an HBCU) and existing and planned internship programs for undergraduates will increase the recruitment of underrepresented minorities. Outreach activities include a required internship in the public understanding of science, in conjunction with area institutions such as the National Geographic Society, USA Today, NPR, the National Academy of Sciences, American Anthropological Association, local schools and others. The program offers research-training opportunities at major international institutions in Europe (e.g., Max Planck Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie (MPIEA); Swedish Museum of Natural History; Università degli Studi di Firenze?s Laboratori di Antropologia; University of Bordeaux), China and Africa. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Paleoanthropology uses the fossil record to work out how and when the defining characteristics of humans, such as large-brains, upright walking, extended juvenile period, and increased longevity, evolved. Advances in molecular biology now make it possible to investigate how the genes of our forbearers might have been modified to generate these defining characteristics. This project focuses on the evolution of a gene (NR2C1) potentially involved in early brain development, and will compare the activity of human versus non-human ape versions of the gene in mouse cells. The data that are generated will advance our understanding of the unique molecular interactions at play in the evolution and development of the modern human brain. In addition, the project has broader impacts to society that include potential pharmacological applications, generation of new, shared genetic data, training of a non-traditional, female graduate student, and public science education and outreach.

Nuclear receptor genes are implicated in the control of growth and development, hormone regulation and behavior. Preliminary evidence suggests that one of these genes, NR2C1, has undergone positive selection in the human lineage. In this six-month study, copies of NR2C1 will be generated for modern humans and chimpanzees, and predicted/reconstructed for a last common ancestor (LCA) of chimpanzees/bonobos and modern humans. These three different gene variants will be inserted into mouse embryonic stem cells that have had NR2C1 knocked down, allowing quantification of the transcriptional and regulatory functions of NR2C1. These methods will allow the investigators to analyze how alterations to the modern human version of NR2C1 may have resulted in the morphological or functional changes we see in the modern human brain. Data on the locations and timing of primate amino acid substitutions for all 48 primate nuclear receptor genes will be generated and will be of interest to the general public and to researchers in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical genetics, neuroscience, and pharmacology. The graduate student researcher, who has years of experience as a biology teacher, is dedicated to providing well-designed student and public education about evolutionary processes.

Recent discoveries of early human ancestors (hominins) highlight the importance of understanding how climate shaped early hominin evolution and behavior. This project will study the ways in which hominin distributions and behavior were shaped by local habitats between 3.2 and 3.6 million years ago in eastern Africa. Data about modern plant and animal diversity will be integrated with paleoecological data for the ancient environment of the same area. The innovative combination of data sources will help to reconstruct ancient ecology at finer-grained time intervals. Broader impacts of the project include graduate training, public science outreach through museums and curriculum development, and support of underrepresented minority students in the STEM sciences.

In this project, current vegetation (isotopes from soil carbonates) and fossil mammal databases will be standardized to make analytical connections between ancient habitats and their associated mammal communities and to gain insight into variation of the hominin ecological niche. The investigators will combine theory from multiple disciplines, such as landscape archaeology, macroecology, and taphonomy, and conduct analytical experiments to connect hominins to environmental proxies (such as soil isotopes) at an appropriate temporal and spatial scale. The proposed ecological relationships are especially important to test in the mid-Pliocene (between 3.6 and 3.2 million years ago), when dietary behavior shifted significantly and innovative behaviors may have occurred, such as the use of stone tools in the Afar basin. Data from the project will be curated to promote the integration of future ecological proxies and data through the use of an open source database that will be created by the co-PI, using PostgreSQL software. The co-PI collaborates with the Koobi Fora Field School and the Evolution in Education program at the George Washington University (GWU) to develop curricula for students from pre-school to university levels, and is also the co-developer of the Young Empowered Scientists (YES!) program at GWU to bring underrepresented, minority students into STEM sciences through mentoring.

Developing new methods for interpreting how different hominin species are related to each other becomes even more critical as more fossils are uncovered, more taxa are recognized, and the human lineage apparently displays greater species diversity. This doctoral dissertation project will examine how dental development, reflected in features of the internal microstructure of teeth, might be used to better understand the hominin family tree. Tooth sections from a wide range of living primate species will be analyzed. The project will support graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 science education, training, and outreach, including for individuals from groups that are underrepresented in the STEM fields. Data from the project will also be made available online.

A long-standing issue in paleoanthropology is the need for methods that can recover phylogenetic relationships in the hominin fossil record. Extant primates are an important comparative resource for understanding the evolutionary changes and phylogenetic relationships in the human lineage. The objectives of this project are to (1) investigate a set of traits derived from dental microstructure; (2) use phylogenetic comparative methods to determine the utility of dental microstructure variables; and (3) test these variables in an extant group of primates whose molecular phylogeny is well-established. The phylogenetic comparative analyses will help to address the extent to which dental microstructure traits carry a phylogenetic signal and therefore how these traits might be used in a phylogenetic context and applied to the hominin fossil record.