Allan Wilson (biologist)

Allan Charles Wilson (born October 18, 1934 in Ngaruawahia , New Zealand , † July 21, 1991 in Seattle ) was a New Zealand biochemist . He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley . He was a pioneer in the application of molecular biological methods in evolutionary research, especially in humans.

Life

Wilson grew up on his parents' dairy farm in Pukekohe, 20 miles south of Auckland . He went to school in Auckland and studied biochemistry and zoology at the University of Otago with a bachelor's degree in 1955 and at Washington State University with a master's degree in zoology in 1957. In 1961, he received his PhD in biochemistry from Arthur Pardee (biosynthesis of flavin in bacteria). As a post-doctoral student , he was with Nathan O. Kaplan at Brandeis University . From 1964 he was in Berkeley with a full professorship for biochemistry from 1972. He died of leukemia .

Among other things, he was visiting scholar at Harvard, St. Louis, Kansas, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Israel and Kenya.

plant

Wilson attracted attention and was still highly controversial during his lifetime for his work on molecular evolution in humans. His first work on " molecular clocks " (number of mutations) as a measure of time for human evolution began in 1967 with Vincent Sarich . By comparing the genetic makeup of humans and chimpanzees - which he found to be 99% identical - he came to the conclusion that the earliest split was 5 million years ago, much later than anthropologists estimated at the time. His laboratory extended these studies of evolution to many other living beings (later to ancient DNA research) and was always at the forefront of research when new techniques were introduced (recombinant DNA techniques, polymerase chain reaction, etc.). At the same time, the methods developed there spread worldwide through his students, including Svante Pääbo and Arend Sidow.

In 1987 a second sensational publication followed on the origin of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) 200,000 years ago in Africa ( African Eve , Mitochondrial Eva ) in Nature (with his doctoral students Rebecca L. Cann and Mark Stoneking ). According to Wilson, this was the result of studying the mitochondrial DNA of various human races. This, too, was initially rejected by anthropologists, as it contradicted the idea of ​​a simultaneous development in several continents and from different homonid lines (in Europe from the Neanderthals , in Asia from Homo erectus ). The thesis of origin in Africa and the non-lineage of Homo sapiens from Neanderthals and the Asian Homo erectus but prevailed later.

Honors, editorship, memberships

He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1972) and a MacArthur Fellow (1986). He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society . The Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution in New Zealand, founded in 2002, is named in his honor.

Wilson was an associate editor of the Journal of Molecular Evolution.

Fonts

• with Rebecca L. Cann : The recent african genesis of humans. In: Scientific American. April 1992.
• Axel Meyer , Thomas D. Kocher, Pereti Basasibwaki, Allan C. Wilson: Monophyletic origin of Lake Victoria cichlid fishes suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences . In: Nature . tape 347 , no. 6293 , 1990, pp. 550-553 , doi : 10.1038 / 347550a0 .
• with RLCann, M. Stoneking: Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. In: Nature . Volume 325, 1987, pp. 31-36.
• The molecular basis of evolution. In: Scientific American. October 1985.

Web links

• Paul Stanley Ward: Allan Wilson - Revolutionary Evolutionist (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wilson, Sarich Immunological time scale for hominid evolution , Science, 158, 1967, pp. 1200-1203
2. ^ Wilson, Sarich A molecular Time-Scale For Human Evolution , Proc. Nat. Acad. USA, 63, 1969, pp. 1088-1093
3. ↑ That was the subject of Mary-Claire King's 1973 dissertation