A.L. Nighter, F.N. Dorf and Steph A. Rose
Philosophical Notions About Science (USA)
Vol 2002, pp 3104-3109, October 1998
Section: Evolution
Keywords: student / postdoc / professor / academic adaptations /
ethanol-induced mutations
Laboratory of Human Applied Directed Evolution, Stanley Hall, University of California,
Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Communicated by Wendell Stanley, October 10, 1998 (received for review September
26, 1998).
ABSTRACT
Success in academia is hypothesized to require specific phenotypes. In order
to understand how such unusual traits arise, we used human clones to
identify the molecular events that occur during the transition from graduate
student to professor. A pool of graduate student clones was subjected to
several rounds of random mutagenesis followed by selection on minimal
money media in the absence of dental insurance. Students surviving this
selection were further screened for the ability to work for long hours with
vending machine snacks as a sole carbon source; clones satisfying these
requirements were dubbed ‘postdocs’. In order to identify ‘assistant
professors’ from amongst the postdocs, this pool was further mutagenized
and screened for the ability to turn esoteric results into a 50-minute seminar.
Finally, these assistant professors were evaluated for their potential to
become full professors in two ways: first, they were screened for
overproduction and surface display of stress proteins, such as Hsp70.
Assistant professors that displayed such proteins (so-called ‘stressed-out’
mutants) were then fused to the M13 coat protein, displayed on phages and
passed over a friend and family members column to identify those that were
incapable of functional interactions. These were called ‘full professors’.
Although these mutants arose independently, they shared striking
phenotypes. These included the propensity to talk incessantly about their
own research, the inability to judge accurately the time required to complete
bench work, and the belief that all of their ideas constituted good thesis
projects. The linkage of all of these traits suggests that these phenotypes are
coordinately regulated. Preliminary experiments have identified a putative
global regulator. Studies are currently being conducted to determine if
overexpression of this gene product in postdocs and graduate students can
speed up the graduate student to full professor evolutionary process.
