What kid would want to study bacterial evolution when they grow up?

OK – I am a bit scared by this, because it shows how little I have changed since I was young. And in my memory, I was not a total science geek for my whole life (you know – I focus on the fact that in high school, I played baseball and hockey and other sports pretty seriously, I guess my memory skips over that I was captain of the math team too).

But I was digging through some old papers and found this … a paper I wrote in ninth grade. We got to select a topic for the paper and mine … “Describe one step in the evolution of a bacterium.” The funny thing is — I do not remember this at all. I mean, I remember reading books by Gould that got me interested in evolution. But surely Gould did not write a lot about bacterial evolution. Where did I come up with this topic? I haven’t a clue. Anyway – here is the essay – errors, fluffy handwriting, and all.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis

2 thoughts on “What kid would want to study bacterial evolution when they grow up?”

  1. haha I had a similar situation when i was 9 I had this discussion with a buddy about career aspirations. We both wanted to be scientists (following the unlikely possibility of a F15 fighter jet pilot (my country hasn’t even got that plane then)and my buddy made an offhand remark that I would probably become a scientist.. my buddy last I heard joined the navy.. the strangest association for childhood aspirations that I saw before was in an awards presentation and a drawing of a worm (might have been a snake) done by Sydney Brenner when he was young. haha I am not too sure if the image use was endorsed by him though.. but seems a bit far fetched to see him thinking of his Nobel Prize when he was still a kid..

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