Axel Meyer (biologist)

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Axel Meyer and Ernst Mayr in Konstanz (1998)

Axel Meyer (born August 4, 1960 in Mölln ) is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Konstanz .

Academic career

After visiting the Katharineum in Lübeck , he completed his basic studies in biology at the University of Marburg from 1979 to 1982 . For his main course he moved to the University of Kiel in 1982 , but in the same year, supported by a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Miami and in 1983 to the University of California, Berkeley , where he (after an academic year 1986-87 at the Harvard University in the laboratory of Prof. Karel Liem) completed his PhD in Zoology at the University of California in 1988.

In the last year of his doctoral thesis, he did research with Allan C. Wilson (1934–1991) at the University of California at Berkeley in the department of biochemistry. He then worked as a postdoc , supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in Molecular Evolution, with Allan C. Wilson until 1990. In 1990 he became Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, which in 1993 appointed him Associate Professor. In 1997 the University of Konstanz appointed him to the chair of zoology and evolutionary biology as the successor to Hubert Markl . During his time as a postdoc, he was part of a team with a. Svante Pääbo, Thomas C. Kocher and Scott Edwards, who developed a protocol for direct sequencing of PCR products. With over 4000 citations, this publication became a citation classic because the methodology and the developed PCR primers have become a standard in molecular systematics and molecular evolutionary biology.

Meyer is one of the most cited and influential evolutionary biologists in the fields of evolutionary genetics, comparative genomics, and molecular evolution.

Research area

Tropheus spec. "Kiriza" and Tropheus moorii "Kachese" (below), cichlids from Lake Tanganyika

Axel Meyer is primarily concerned with the processes of speciation and the genomic basis of adaptations . The evolutionary processes and systematics, especially of the cichlids of African lakes such as Lake Victoria , Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi , were significantly advanced through his research. He was able to show that the species groups of individual lakes in their various behavioral biology and morphological must have developed adaptations each from different parent species while keeping a very high degree of convergence show for the rapid Speziationsgeschwindigkeit are by Meyer several consecutive dehydration events and other forms of temporary separation responsible for fish populations .

Meyer's research showed, contrary to an old dogma of his teacher and mentor Ernst Mayr, that sympatric speciation , the emergence of new species without geographical barriers, is quite possible. Empirical examples from Meyer's research for sympatric speciation are the parallel evolving swarms of species of cichlids in the crater lakes in Nicaragua

In a series of publications based on DNA sequence analyzes (since 1990) Meyer was able to show that lung fish and not the coelacanth ( Latimeria ) are the closest living relatives of the terrestrial vertebrates. He was also part of the consortium that sequenced the complete coelacanth genome

In genomics and molecular evolution, Meyer made important contributions to a better understanding of the meaning of gene and genome duplications. His laboratory was the first to recognize with Jochen Wittbrodt and Manfred Schartl that the ancestor of all modern fish ( teleostier ) had undergone a complete genome duplication and that teleostier originally had twice as many genes as the ancestor of terrestrial vertebrates, including humans. Furthermore, several studies have shown the different evolution of duplicated genes with regard to the rate of evolution and functional change of paralogue genes. Together with Yves Van de Peer, he was able to show the important role genome duplications played, especially in the evolution of plants.

An important aspect of his research is molecular biological investigations with which the relationships of the individual species are tested. Zardoya and Meyer were the first to use molecular data to show the close relationship between turtles and archosauria (birds and crocodiles). The relationship between the amphibians was also examined and the Batrachia hypothesis (a sister group ratio of frogs and tail amphibians ) was supported

In collaboration with Thomas Elbert's laboratory , Meyer is also researching epigenetics , how the effects of stress and trauma can be passed on from mothers to their children. They were able to show that trauma and stress during pregnancy are still visible in epigenetic markers in children over eighteen.

Awards and memberships

Axel Meyer has received a number of national and international awards for his scientific work.

  • 1982–84: Fulbright Fellowship (German and American Governments)
  • 1985: Margarete T. Kirby Award in Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 1985: Excellence in Teaching Award in Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 1986: University of California Presidential Fellowship
  • 1987: Raney Award, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
  • 1988: Kofoid Award in Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 1988: Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Molecular Evolution.
  • 1990: Young Investigator Award, American Society of Naturalists
  • 1987: Ernst Mayr Award from Harvard University
  • 1996: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
  • 1996: Miller Fellowship - Visiting Research Professorship, Dept. of Integrative Biology and Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 2000: Academy Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
  • 2007: ISI Highly Cited - the World's 250 most cited researchers in Plant & Animal Sciences
  • 2007: "Hot 100" authors of BioMed Central journals
  • 2008: Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • 2008: EMBO Communication Award in the life sciences for its efforts to communicate with the public.
  • 2009: Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences .
  • 2009: Member of the Leopoldina .
  • 2009: Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.
  • 2009: Carus Medal of the Leopoldina
  • 2012: Member of the Academia Europaea .
  • 2012: Hector Science Award
  • 2013: Member of the Hector Fellow Academy .
  • 2017: The 500 most important intellectuals. Cicero magazine for political culture.
  • 2017: Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
  • 2018: Luigi Tartufari Int. Prize in Molecular, Cellular, Evolutionary Biology, of the Accademia Nazional Dei Lincei (the Italian Academy of Sciences).
  • 2019: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
  • Member of a number of scientific societies
  • Participation in the editorial board of several specialist journals in zoology, evolutionary biology and molecular biology .
  • Member of the advisory board of the evolutionary-humanistic Giordano Bruno Foundation .

Controversial positions

Meyer made headlines nationwide in 2004 when employees complained about the working atmosphere and the university initiated an investigation.

Privileged students

In 2015, Axel Meyer described today's students at German universities as spoiled - unlike in most countries, they did not pay any tuition fees. After his office at the University of Konstanz was broken into two days before an exam and the police summoned him to inform him that professors' offices were occasionally broken into to steal exams, Meyer no longer wanted to rule out the possibility in the article that this was also the case with him. In his article he asks the question: "Would students break into a professor's office to steal the exam topic?" And then goes on: "At least I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case." The then rector of the university Konstanz, Ulrich Rüdiger , described several passages in Meyer's article as “defamatory and insulting” and had possible consequences against Meyer examined. However, there were no legal consequences whatsoever, despite Rüdiger's public threats against Meyer. In a circular to the professors of the university, Rüdiger stated that Meyer had made several "untrue statements of fact about the conditions at the University of Konstanz" in public. Rüdiger refused to talk to Meyer. His newsletter contained several factually incorrect statements. Nevertheless, Meyer apologized for his choice of words in the gloss in the FAZ.

Publications and scientific sphere of activity

Science communication in the press

With over 70 articles in major German daily newspapers, such as Die Zeit or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Axel Meyer is very active in science communication.

Selection of publications:

  • Adam's apple and Eve's inheritance. How genes determine our lives and why women are different from men. With a foreword by Harald Martenstein . Bertelsmann, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-570-10204-6 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Algae rasps, snail crackers, scale eater. Axel Meyer on the evolutionary success of the cichlids. Audio CD, 79 minutes and booklet, 16 pages. Concept, direction and production: Klaus Sander. Narrator: Axel Meyer. supposé, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-932513-86-2 .
  • Evolution is everywhere. Collected column "Quantum Leap" of the Handelsblatt. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77771-7 .
  • The metamorphoses. In: The time . No. 14, from March 25, 2004, (review by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhards The Becoming of Life ).
  • as editor with Yves van de Peer: Genome Evolution. Gene and Genome Duplications and the Origin of Novel Gene Functions. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht et al. 2003, ISBN 1-4020-1021-4 .

Scientific sphere of activity

With a Google Scholar h-Index of 112, Axel Meyer is one of the 30 most cited evolutionary biologists worldwide. He has published over 400 scientific articles in the research areas of zoology, phylogenetics, evolutionary developmental biology, molecular evolution and comparative genomics, including a PCR protocol from 1989, which is now one of the citation classics. More than 20 of his scientific articles have been published in Nature , the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal; nine appeared in Science .

literature

  • Helmut Plattner: And Axel Meyer is right . In: Südkurier . October 23, 2015, p. 31 ( online [accessed January 3, 2018]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ TD Kocher, WK Thomas, A Meyer, SV Edwards, S Pääbo, FX Villablanca, AC Wilson (1989): Dynamics of mitochondrial DNA evolution in animals: amplification and sequencing with conserved primers. PNAS Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the USA 86 (16): 6196-6200 doi: 10.1073 / pnas.86.16.6196
  2. ↑ Axel Meyer. Google Scholar Citations .
  3. ↑ Citation comparison 2004 to 2007: Evolution research by Lara Winckler, Laborjournal 6/2010
  4. Jump up ↑ A Meyer, TD Kocher, P Basasibwaki, AC Wilson (1990): Monophyletic origin of Lake Victoria cichlid fishes suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences Nature 347 (6293), 550-553.
  5. ^ C Sturmbauer, A Meyer (1992): Genetic divergence, speciation and morphological stasis in a lineage of African cichlid fishes. Nature 358, 578-5810.
  6. ^ E Verheyen, W Salzburger, J Snoeks, A Meyer (2003): Origin of the superflock of cichlid fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa Science 300 (5617), 325-329. 2003. https://www.nature.com/articles/358578a0
  7. ↑ M Barluenga, KN Stölting, W Salzburger, M Muschick, A Meyer (2006): Sympatric speciation in Nicaraguan crater lake cichlid fish. Nature 439: 719-723 (7077).
  8. ^ A Meyer, AC Wilson (1990): Origin of tetrapods inferred from their mitochondrial DNA affiliation to lungfish Journal of Molecular Evolution 31 (5), 359-364
  9. ↑ CT Amemiya, J Alföldi, AP Lee, S Fan, H Philippe, I MacCallum, I Braasch et al. (2013): The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolutionNature 496 (7445), 311.
  10. ^ J Wittbrodt, A Meyer, M Schartl (1996): More genes in fish? BioEssays 20, 511-515.
  11. ↑ JS Taylor, I Braasch, T Frickey, A Meyer, Y Van de Peer (2003): Genome duplication, a trait shared by 22,000 species of ray-finned fish. Genome research 13 (3), 382-390.
  12. ^ A Meyer, E Malaga-Trillo (1999): Vertebrate genomics: More fishy tales about Hox genes. Current biology 9, R210-R213
  13. ^ S Hoegg, H Brinkmann, JS Taylor, A Meyer (2004): Phylogenetic timing of the fish-specific genome duplication correlates with the diversification of teleost fish. Journal of molecular evolution 59 (2), 190-203.
  14. ↑ Y Van de Peer, JS Taylor, I Braasch, A Meyer (2001): The ghost of selection past: rates of evolution and functional divergence of anciently duplicated genes. Journal of molecular evolution 53 (4-5), 436-446
  15. ↑ JS Taylor, Y Van de Peer, I Braasch, A Meyer (2001): Comparative genomics provides evidence for an ancient genome duplication event in fish. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 356 (1414): 1661-1679.
  16. ↑ A Meyer, R Zardoya (2004): Recent advances in the (molecular) phylogeny of vertebrates. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 34, 311-338.
  17. ↑ R Zardoya, A Meyer (1996): Phylogenetic performance of mitochondrial protein-coding genes in resolving relationships among vertebrates. Molecular biology and evolution 13 (7): 933-942
  18. ↑ R Zardoya, A Meyer (1998): Complete mitochondrial genome Suggests diapsid affinities of turtles Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (24), 14226-14231.
  19. ↑ R Zardoya, A Meyer (2001): The evolutionary position of turtles revised science 88 (5), 193-200.
  20. ↑ R Zardoya, A Meyer (2001): On the origin of and phylogenetic relationships among living amphibians. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (13), 7380-7383).
  21. ↑ KM Radtke, M Ruf, HM Gunter, K Dohrmann, M Schauer, A Meyer, ... (2011): Transgenerational impact of intimate partner violence on methylation in the promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor. Translational psychiatry 1 (7), e21.
  22. ↑ http://www.embo.org/news/press-releases/press-releases-2008/prominent-german-biologist-wins-embo-communication-award
  23. ↑ Awards, new members, new research projects: The Einstein Day of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , press release in: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft from November 13, 2009, accessed on November 19, 2009
  24. ↑ Member entry of Prof. Ph. D. Axel Meyer (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 19, 2016.
  25. ↑ Axel Meyer is a new member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  26. ↑ http://www.ae-info.org/ae/User/Meyer_Axel
  27. ↑ Awarding of the Hector Science Prize
  28. ^ Founding ceremony of the Hector Fellow Academy
  29. ↑ https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/axel-meyer
  30. ↑ https://www.zeit.de/2004/29/B-Lehrerzimmer
  31. ↑ Axel Meyer: Honor and honesty of the students. In: FAZ.net . April 16, 2015, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  32. ^ Statement by the University of Konstanz on the article "Ehre und Ehrlichkeit der Studenten", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 16, 2015, published on April 20, 2015
  33. ↑ Andreas Maisch: "Lazy Students" - Professor apologizes - Welt, May 19, 2015
  34. ↑ Meyer Lab website | .
  35. ↑ Google Scholar: Evolutionary Biologists
  36. ^ Google Scholar: Axel Meyer
  37. ↑ Publons: Axel Meyer
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Axel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Mölln