At the end of the month, a small band of scientists led by several Duke researchers will adopt a plethora of organisms--including humans, birds, fish, snakes and insects at the new National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Fortunately for the investigators, these arrivals do not need food or water since they will all exist only as data sets inside computers. In fact, the chief responsibility of the scientists will be to synthesize the millions of pieces of information regarding the new additions to track evolutionary changes through DNA.
'So much data is just flowing in--but in many cases we just don"t have the software tools to analyze this data in a reasonable way, and our center is going to allow us to "stop messing around,"' said Cliff Cunningham, the center"s director.
The evolutionary center, the result of collaborations between Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, was established with a $15 million grant from the National Science Foundation--the largest single amount ever delegated to a study of evolution.
'The center grant confirms Duke"s preeminence in the field of evolutionary biology and will offer new research learning opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students within the center,' said George McLendon, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences.
Although its roots originate in the Research Triangle, 'the center will begin in a national scale and very quickly take on international proportions,' said Stephen Nowicki, dean of natural sciences.
An in-house team of about 30 scientists will work under the supervision of the center"s board of directors and collaborate with hundreds of researchers who are expected to visit the center over the next couple of years.
'Our hope is to bring in experts and scholars from around the world to spend time in the center--for it to have national and international significance,' said Huntington Willard, director of the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. 'There is tremendous opportunity for synergism.'
Willard funded the world"s only phylogenetic consultant who will work with students and scientists as they develop their data, bring it to the center and answer some of the major evolutionary questions.
The center"s goal is to be as open with the evolutionary databases as possible; the information will be readily accessible to the public, researchers and policy-makers.
'The understanding of evolution has been critical and will be critical to almost anything in medicine and the biological sciences. Much of infectious diseases is a battle between our genomes as humans and the genomes of viruses. We need to understand what rules the infectious agents play by,' Willard said. 'The tools to fight infections and prevent the infections depend on our understanding of evolution.'
The center"s advocates point out that the center will provide a means for understanding global diseases like malaria and will offer perspective in the battle between evolutionism and creationism. The center"s supporters believe that it can play a significant role in guiding policy surrounding environmental issues like conservation and biodiversity.
'The world is diminishing around us, We need policy to slow it down, and those decisions are intimately involved in a deep evolutionary history,' Nowicki said.
The center will be located temporarily above Cinelli"s Pizza on Ninth Street. It will move into its permanent residence in the Erwin Square Mill Building in Durham by 2006.
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