tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/tree-of-life-61588/articlesTree of Life – The Conversation2024-02-22T18:16:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2190722024-02-22T18:16:18Z2024-02-22T18:16:18ZExtreme environments are coded into the genomes of the organisms that live there<p>An organism’s genome is a set of DNA instructions needed for its development, function and reproduction. The genome of a present-day organism contains information from its journey on an evolutionary path that starts with the
“<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30363-1_3">first universal common ancestor</a>” of all life on Earth and culminates with that organism. </p>
<p>Encoded within itself, an organism’s genome contains information that can reveal connections to its ancestors and its relatives.</p>
<h2>Other dimensions of the genome</h2>
<p>Our research explores the hypothesis that an organism’s genome could contain other types of information, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42518-y">beyond genealogy or taxonomy</a>. We asked: Could the genome of an organism contain information that would allow us to determine the type of environment the organism lives in?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a large black lake" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574213/original/file-20240207-16-upk4fk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Extremophiles have been found in environments such as Pitch Lake in Trinidad and Tobago, the largest asphalt deposit in the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As unlikely as it seems, our team of computer science and biology researchers at the University of Waterloo and Western University found that to be the case for extremophiles — organisms that live and thrive in extremely harsh conditions. These environmental conditions range from extreme heat (over 100 C) to extreme cold (below -12 C), high radiation or extremes in acidity or pressure.</p>
<h2>DNA as a language</h2>
<p>We looked at genomic DNA as a text written in a “DNA language.” A DNA strand (or DNA sequence) consists of a succession of <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Nucleotide">basic units called nucleotides</a>, strung together by a sugar-phosphate backbone. There are four such different DNA units: <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/acgt">adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (A,C,G,T)</a>. </p>
<p>Viewed abstractly, a DNA sequence can be thought of as a line of text, written with “letters” from the “DNA alphabet.” For example, “CAT” would be the three-letter “DNA word” corresponding to the three-unit DNA sequence cytosine-adenine-thymine.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, it was discovered that by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/18.8.2163">counting occurrences</a> of such DNA words in a short DNA sequence extracted from the genome of an organism, one could identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026048">the species of the organism</a> and the degree of its relatedness to other organisms in the evolutionary “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.48">tree of life</a>.”</p>
<p>The mechanism of this identification or classification of an organism based on DNA word counts is similar to the process that allows us to differentiate an English book from a French book: By taking one page from each book one notices that the English text has many occurrences of the three-letter word “the,” while the French text has many occurrences of the three-letter word “les.”</p>
<p>Note that the word-frequency profile of each book is not dependent on the particular page we chose to read and on whether we considered multiple pages, a single page or an entire chapter. Similarly, the frequency profile of DNA words in a genome is not dependent on the location and on the length of the DNA sequence that was selected to represent that genome.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="rows of lights with the letters C, A, G, T projected from them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574232/original/file-20240207-33-kdilvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A DNA strand consists of a succession of basic units: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (ACGT).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That DNA word-frequency profiles can act as a “genomic signature” of an organism was a significant discovery and, until now, it was believed that the DNA word-frequency profile of a genome only contained evolutionary information pertaining to the species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom or domain that the organism belonged to.</p>
<p>Our team set out to ask whether the DNA word-frequency profile of a genome could reveal other kinds of information — for example, information regarding the type of extreme environment that a microbial extremophile thrives in.</p>
<h2>Environment imprints in extremophile DNA</h2>
<p>We used a dataset of 700 microbial extremophiles living in extreme temperatures (either extreme heat or cold) or extreme pH conditions (strongly acidic or alkaline). We used both <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btz918">supervised machine learning</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btad508">unsupervised machine learning</a> computational approaches to test our hypothesis.</p>
<p>In both types of environmental conditions, we discovered that we could clearly detect an environmental signal indicating the type of extreme environment a particular organism inhabited. </p>
<p>In the case of unsupervised machine learning, a “blind” algorithm was given a dataset of extremophile DNA sequences (and no other information about either their taxonomy or their living environment). The algorithm was then asked to group these DNA sequences in clusters, based on whatever similarities it could find among their DNA word-frequency profiles. </p>
<p>The expectation was that all the clusters discovered this way would be along taxonomic lines: bacteria grouped with bacteria, and archaea grouped with archaea. To our great surprise, this was not always the case, and some archaea and bacteria were consistently grouped together, no matter what algorithms we used. </p>
<p>The only obvious commonality that could explain their being considered similar by the multiple machine learning algorithms was that they were heat-loving extremophiles.</p>
<h2>A shocking discovery</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42924-w">tree of life</a>, a conceptual framework used in biology that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.87.12.4576">represents geneaological relationships</a> between species, has three major limbs, called domains: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.74.11.5088">bacteria, archaea and eukarya</a>.</p>
<p>Eukaryotes are organisms that have a membrane-bound nucleus, and this domain includes animals, plants, fungi and the unicellular microscopic protists. In contrast, bacteria and archaea are single-cell organisms that do not have a membrane-bound nucleus containing the genome. What distinguishes bacteria from archaea is the composition of their cell walls.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a figure showing the three branches of the tree of life" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576771/original/file-20240220-22-6gkrf4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A schematic tree of life with the primary domains, archaea and bacteria, shown in purple and blue, respectively and the secondary domain, Eukaryotes, in green.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1006461">(Tara Mahendrarajah)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The three domains of life are dramatically different from each other and, genetically, a bacterium is as different from an archaeon as a polar bear (eukarya) is from an <em>E. coli</em> (bacteria). </p>
<p>The expectation was therefore that the genome of a bacterium and of an archaeon would be as far apart as possible in any clustering by any genomic similarity measure. Our finding of some bacteria and archaea clustered together, apparently just because they are both adapted to extreme heat, means that the extreme temperature environment they live in caused pervasive, genome-wide, systemic shifts in their genome language. </p>
<p>This discovery is akin to finding a completely new dimension of the genome, an environmental one, existent in addition to its well-known taxonomic dimension.</p>
<h2>Genomic impact of other environments</h2>
<p>Besides being unexpected, this finding could have implications for our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth, as well as guide our thinking into what it would take to live in outer space. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an orange sphere with a tail" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576775/original/file-20240220-16-7aq8tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Pyrococcus furiosus</em>, a thermophilic archaeon that was surprisingly grouped with thermophilic bacteria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P_furiosus.jpg">(Michelle Kropf/Wikimedia Commons)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, our ongoing research is exploring the existence of an environmental signal in the genomic signature of radiation-resistant extremophiles, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2020.2424"><em>Deinococcus radiodurans</em></a>, which can survive radiation exposure, as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a012765">cold</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.178.3.633-637.1996">dehydration</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00909">vacuum conditions</a> and acid, and was shown to be able to survive in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2020.2424">outer space for up to three years</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen A. Hill receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lila Kari receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). </span></em></p>Computer analysis of the genomes of extremophiles — organisms that live in extreme environments — reveals that their living conditions are recorded in their DNA.Kathleen A. Hill, Associate Professor Biology, Western UniversityLila Kari, Professor, Computer Science, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2160062023-10-30T19:10:53Z2023-10-30T19:10:53ZWe need a single list of all life on Earth – and most taxonomists now agree on how to start<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556256/original/file-20231027-21-nxmtp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=151%2C53%2C4719%2C3316&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/common-kingfisher-alcedo-atthis-wetlands-birdss-2331210013">Sumruay Rattanataipob/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Species lists are one of the unseen pillars of science and society. Lists of species underpin our understanding of the natural world, threatened species management, quarantine, disease control and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13127-021-00518-8">much else besides</a>. </p>
<p>The people who describe new species and create lists of them are taxonomists. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/546025a">A few years ago</a>, a headline in the journal Nature accused the taxonomic community of anarchy for not coordinating a common view of species, leading to confusion about our knowledge of life on earth.</p>
<p>Many in the taxonomic community <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005075">took umbrage</a> at this. Taxonomists were concerned that the ideas proposed would limit their freedom of expression and they would be tied to a bureaucracy before they could publish new species descriptions.</p>
<p>Taxonomists certainly argue – disputation is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13127-021-00495-y">essential to the practice of taxonomy</a>, as it is to science in general. Ultimately, however, a taxonomist’s life is spent trying to discern order in the extraordinarily diverse tree of life.</p>
<p>The results of a new survey published today in the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2306899120">Proceedings of the National Academies of Science</a>, show just how much taxonomists really do like order.</p>
<h2>Hardly a group of anarchists</h2>
<p>The argument was about how to solve disagreements between taxonomists. Eventually, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-scientific-spat-over-how-to-name-species-turned-into-a-big-plus-for-nature-138887">two sides came together</a> to produce principles on the creation of a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736">single authoritative list of species</a>.</p>
<p>This group then went to the taxonomic community to survey their views on whether a global species list is needed and how it should be run.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-scientific-spat-over-how-to-name-species-turned-into-a-big-plus-for-nature-138887">How a scientific spat over how to name species turned into a big plus for nature</a>
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<p>The newly published results show that a large majority (77%) of respondents – which included over 1,100 taxonomists and users of taxonomy across 74 countries – have expressed support for having a single list of all life on Earth.</p>
<p>They also agreed there should be a governance system that supports the list’s creation and maintenance. Just what that governance system would entail is not yet specified. Deciding that will be the next step in the process.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small grey animal looking like a cross between a kangaroo and a rat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556258/original/file-20231027-15-lpxxvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Understanding species taxonomy is crucial for their management. Knowing the taxonomy of marsupials like this bettong helps identify what needs conserving and where.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bettong-australias-smallest-kangaroo-glances-curiously-1658557687">Tyrrannoid/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Taxonomists propose hypotheses, not facts</h2>
<p>Why is this important? Many may not realise that when a taxonomist names a new species description, they are proposing a scientific hypothesis, not presenting an <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-44966-1">objective scientific fact</a>.</p>
<p>Other taxonomists then look at the evidence provided in the description and decide whether they agree. If people making species lists judge that there is agreement about a hypothesis, the new species goes on their list. </p>
<p>Only after a species is listed can it be protected, studied, eradicated, ignored or whatever else governments decide is appropriate. Scientists and conservation advocates also need species to be listed before they can include them in their work. Until listed, the species remains, for all practical purposes, invisible. </p>
<p>However, not all lists are equally trusted. Very rarely taxonomists do go rogue. One notorious taxonomist has been blacklisted for “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/133/3/645/6240088?login=falsename">taxonomic vandalism</a>”. He published all sorts of new names – some even commemorated his dog – with little justification. If accepted, his field (herpetology) would have been thrown into chaos.</p>
<p>The work of rogue taxonomists wastes everyone’s time and money. In one instance, poor taxonomy has even killed people – an antivenom labelled with the wrong name for a snake was distributed in Africa and Papua New Guinea <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359053/">with disastrous results</a>.</p>
<p>Even without rogue taxonomists, there is an enormous problem with so-called synonyms – different people giving different names for the same species. Some species have tens of scientific names, not to mention misspellings. </p>
<p>This leaves users uncertain what name to use. Sometimes they use different names but mean the same species; sometimes the same names but mean different species. The only way to clarify this confusion is by having a working master list of species names linked to the scientific literature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A colourful coral reef with schools of fish and a turtle swimming above it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556257/original/file-20231027-17-f2a7fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Biodiversity is an essential feature of our planet and its ecosystems – but to understand it, we also need to understand the individual species.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tropical-fish-turtle-red-sea-egypt-211006552">Vlad61/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Now what?</h2>
<p>The newly released survey shows taxonomists and users of taxonomy have achieved an agreement that good lists need good governance. Species lists need to reflect the best science, independent of outside influence. They need dispute resolution processes. And they need involvement and agreement from the taxonomic community on their contents.</p>
<p>Governance of science does not work unless a large majority of scientists agree with the rules, because participation is voluntary. There’s no such thing as science police. </p>
<p>Agreement and compliance is best achieved if scientists themselves are involved in the creation of the rules. This helps to increase buy-in among the community of peers to make sure rules are kept.</p>
<p>Based on the survey results, <a href="https://www.catalogueoflife.org/">the Catalogue of Life</a> – the group that has the most comprehensive global species list to date, and the one we’re involved in – is piloting ways of measuring the quality of the lists that make up their catalogue. </p>
<p>These are being trialled first with the creators of lists, everything from viruses to mammals. Then, they will be tested with the taxonomic community at large for further feedback.</p>
<p>Good taxonomy is far more valuable than people realise. One recent study in Australia found that, for every dollar spent on taxonomy, <a href="https://www.science.org.au/support/analysis/decadal-plans-science/discovering-biodiversity-decadal-plan-taxonomy#report2021">the economy gained A$35</a>. The value of taxonomy globally is likely to be colossal.</p>
<p>But the value will be higher still if everyone the world over is able to use the same list of species.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-re-counted-australias-extinct-species-and-the-result-is-devastating-127611">Scientists re-counted Australia's extinct species, and the result is devastating</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Garnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on taxonomic list governance and coordinates the Catalogue of Life Working Group on Taxonomic Lists. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron M. Lien is a member of the Catalogue of Life Working Group on Taxonomic Lists and the Global Species List Working Group. </span></em></p>Only after a species is identified and listed by taxonomists can it be protected. Yet we still don’t have one globally agreed-upon list of every species. A new 74-nation survey points to the solution.Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin UniversityAaron M. Lien, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Management and Restoration of Rangelands, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151032023-10-09T17:19:20Z2023-10-09T17:19:20ZWild plants may edit their genomes in the same way we make GM crops – and it could be crucial to evolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552485/original/file-20231006-25-tjh98j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C24%2C5447%2C3612&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/girl-runs-her-hand-over-tall-2017555694">zhukovvvlad/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Genetically modified (GM) crops may be controversial, but similar processes happen naturally with wild plants. However, scientists have long been puzzled about how these processes happen. Our <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.19272">recent study</a> may help researchers solve the mystery. </p>
<p>People often use the “<a href="https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/tree-of-life-evolution">tree of life</a>” as a metaphor to describe the evolutionary relationships between organisms. The more closely related species are, the closer together they appear in the tree.</p>
<p>This is a bit misleading though, as reality is more complicated. Species don’t always split off along their own evolutionary path in isolation from other branches. In fact, in some groups of organisms, connections among branches are so common that we may need to abandon the notion of a tree of life altogether. This is particularly true for bacteria, where the evolutionary relationships look more like a <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2012.00113/full">tangled web than a tree</a>. The crosstalk between branches is caused by the movement of genetic information.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536854/#:%7E:text=DEFINITION%20AND%20BACKGROUND,offspring">Horizontal gene transfer</a> (also known as lateral gene transfer) is the process by which pieces of DNA (such as genes) move between organisms outside of the usual parent to offspring route. It allows genetic information to be shared between distant branches of the tree of life without sexual reproduction, and it is responsible for the rapid spread of traits such as <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.01933/full">antibiotic resistance</a> among bacteria. </p>
<p>Originally scientists thought this phenomenon was restricted to microbes, but we now know it also happens in a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136952661500059X?via%3Dihub">wide range of plants</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867421001641?via%3Dihub">animals</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/evlett/article/2/2/88/6697442?login=true">fungi</a>, where it can spread the genetic recipe for traits that have an evolutionary advantage. </p>
<h2>Horizontal gene transfer in grasses</h2>
<p>Grasses are one of the most important groups of plants and include crops such as rice, wheat and maize. They cover almost 40% of the Earth’s landmass and make up the <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(10)01021-3.pdf">majority of human calorie intake</a>. </p>
<p>Horizontal gene transfer between grass species has been found in <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.17328">wild and cultivated species alike</a>. While we know these transfers happen from the marks they leave in species’ <a href="https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genome">genomes</a> (the entire set of DNA instructions in a cell), we still do not know the mechanism behind it. Neither do we know how often it happens – something <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.19272">our recent study</a>, published in New Phytologist, aimed to address.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man stands in shirt sleeves in wheat field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552487/original/file-20231006-15-91w9my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grasses make up a large part of humanity’s diet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-farmer-standing-green-wheat-field-2311732409">Zoran Zeremski/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Understanding the pace of horizontal gene transfer would allow us to assess its impact upon the planet and plant evolution and how quickly it can help plants to adapt to changes. For example, is it common enough that plants could already be using it in response to climate change? </p>
<p>We sequenced several genomes for the tropical grass <em><a href="https://eol.org/pages/2896180">Alloteropsis semialata</a></em> to estimate the frequency of gene transfers into this species. Our study retraced the evolutionary history of each gene in the genome, identified genes that were of foreign origin, and worked out when and where they were transferred.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Grass with brown and yellow flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552494/original/file-20231006-29-6ls4ci.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alloteropsis semialata is also known as black seed grass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alloteropsis_semialata_flowers.jpeg">Marjorie Lundgren</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings showed that genes were continually acquired throughout the evolutionary history of this species, with a foreign gene incorporated approximately every 35,000 years. </p>
<p>However, this is a dramatic underestimate of the real rate of transfers into the species because it doesn’t show gene transfers that may have been lost afterwards. Most transferred genes are unlikely to give the recipient any benefit – and can even have negative consequences for the plant if they disrupt essential parts of the recipient’s genetic code. Genes that don’t offer the recipient an advantage are often lost. It’s much harder for scientists to detect these kinds of transient genes. </p>
<p>The genes that are retained are generally those that offer the recipient an evolutionary advantage. For example, many of the horizontally transferred genes detected in grasses offer <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.17328">disease resistance, stress tolerance and increased energy production</a>. These genes may have been optimised in the genomes of the donor species for millions of years. Horizontal gene transfer allows the recipient to skip this long refinement process. </p>
<h2>GM technology</h2>
<p>Ultimately horizontal gene transfer and GM crops have the same outcome: a gene of foreign origin is inserted into a recipient’s genome.</p>
<p>Our study gave an insight into how often horizontal transfers are happening. But we still don’t know how genes are moving between distantly related species. There are many theories but we think a mechanism called <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp3.10347">reproductive contamination</a> is most likely. It mirrors some of the methods used to make GM crops. </p>
<p>There are several different methods by which you can make a GM plant – some that require intense human intervention and some that don’t. Simple techniques such as repeated pollination or <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30543062/#:%7E:text=There%20are%20three%20major%20steps,%3B%20Pollen%20tube%20pathway%3B%20Transformation.">pollen tube pathway-mediated transfer</a> require minimal human intervention. In these methods, small fragments of DNA from a third individual travel down the same pollen tube established by the father to contaminate the embryo in the seed. In theory this could occur naturally.</p>
<p>In the future we plan to test this idea and see if we can recreate some of the natural transfers we have documented. If successful, it may be time to reconsider how we view GM crops. Perhaps they are closer to natural processes than we think.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Dunning receives funding from The Natural Environment Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara Pereira and Pauline Raimondeau do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent study investigated how fast genes are being transferred between distantly related species.Luke Dunning, Natural Environment Research Council Independent Research Fellow, University of SheffieldLara Pereira, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Genetics, University of SheffieldPauline Raimondeau, Postdoctoral Associate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077202023-06-20T12:27:59Z2023-06-20T12:27:59ZThe tree of life has been a powerful image in Jewish tradition for thousands of years – signifying much more than immortality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532441/original/file-20230616-29-13d56x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C2101%2C1412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tree of life imagery appears in several sections of the Bible.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/tree-hugging-royalty-free-image/141377343?phrase=large+tree&adppopup=true">Catherine MacBride/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After two months of trial, jurors unanimously <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jury-recommends-sentence-death-pennsylvania-man-convicted-tree-life-synagogue-shooting">recommended the death sentence</a> for Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 – the deadliest <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/29/18037580/pittsburgh-shooter-anti-semitism-racist-jewish-caravan">antisemitic attack</a> in U.S. history. A federal judge <a href="https://apnews.com/article/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-death-penalty-ccb447356b2cfe855875c329fb00f505">formally imposed the sentence</a> on Aug. 3, 2023.</p>
<p>The name of the synagogue, Tree of Life, has almost become shorthand for the tragedy. Yet it highlights a symbol from the Bible that has transformed over time, coming to represent how the human and the divine relate through revelation. In Jewish Scripture and Jewish thought, <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-is-the-tree-of-life-etz-chaim/">the tree of life</a> speaks to fundamental aspects of what it means to be human in the world.</p>
<p>In my research as <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/jewishstudies/samuel-boyd">a scholar of the Bible and ancient Judaism</a>, I have been amazed at the potency of the symbol of the tree of life. Not only has the symbol itself transformed over time, but it has the power to transform communities along with it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An orange, autumn-foliage tree with long branches extending over an open grave." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532099/original/file-20230615-18-ixz5ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The final resting place of Rose Mallinger, 97, who was among the 11 victims of the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, lies ready for her casket.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-final-resting-place-of-rose-mallinger-lays-ready-for-news-photo/1055780540?adppopup=true">Jeff Swensen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>In the beginning</h2>
<p>The tree of life appears in <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/8704">the Book of Genesis</a>, at the very beginning of the Hebrew Bible – what many Christians call the Old Testament. </p>
<p>In the creation story of <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.2.10?lang=bi&aliyot=0">chapters 2</a> and 3, God places man in the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300178692/what-really-happened-in-the-garden-of-eden/">Garden of Eden</a>, then creates woman, Eve, from his rib. Eden is filled with “every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food,” as well as the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – but God commands the man not to eat this last tree’s fruit. </p>
<p>Before long, however, a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/from-creation-to-babel-studies-in-genesis-111-9780567370303/">serpent tempts Eve and Adam</a> to do just that. When the serpent speaks, it addresses Eve directly – and for centuries, art and stories about the Garden of Eden <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/stories/from-the-garden-of-eden-to-killing-eve-deconstructing-the-first-woman-in-art">have portrayed her as “responsible</a>” for succumbing to temptation. </p>
<p>Yet in the Hebrew text, the snake often uses verbs for the second person plural, suggesting that it is addressing Adam as well – or at least implying the benefits of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will apply to him, too.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/from-creation-to-abraham-9780567703118/">Biblical scholars debate</a> the meaning of the tree’s name: what exactly do “knowledge” or “good and evil” entail? Persuaded that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will make them like God, however, Adam and Eve consume the fruit. Worried that the couple might eat from the tree of life as well, making them immortal, God <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.3.23?lang=bi&aliyot=0">expels Adam and Eve from the garden</a> and places a flaming sword and angelic beings at the entrance to prevent reentry.</p>
<p>This transgression of the boundary between divinity and humanity begins <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.6.2?lang=bi&aliyot=0">a recurring theme</a> in the Bible, one that famously appears in the story of <a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9781506480671/Babel">the Tower of Babel</a> in Genesis 11. In this latter passage, humans build a tower and a city without conferring with God at all – both acts that, in the ancient world, defied divine prerogative. </p>
<h2>Two trees</h2>
<p>These two trees, especially the tree of life, have long raised questions for scholars. Though the tree of life <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.2.10?lang=bi&aliyot=0">is introduced at the same time</a> as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the rest of Genesis’ creation story focuses on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life does not reappear until <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.3.22?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en">the end of the Eden story</a>, when God expels Adam and Eve to prevent them from eating it.</p>
<p>Some scholars have argued that the two trees in Genesis emerged from two <a href="https://www.mupress.org/Genesis-P1083.aspx">distinct traditions</a> in the ancient Near East. The tree of life symbolism had a <a href="https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004423756/BP000002.xml">long history</a> in the region. Kings from <a href="https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004423756/BP000003.xml">Assyria in ancient Mesopotamia and elsewhere</a> would use a verdant tree in imagery to evoke the wonders and fertility of their domain. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A worn stone carving of winged figures on either side of a tree." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532097/original/file-20230615-18-krqfj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A relief from ancient Assyria with two winged mythological beings and the god Ashur before the tree of life. From the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/relief-with-two-figures-of-ashurnasirpal-winged-news-photo/464450757?adppopup=true">Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The two themes associated with each tree, however – wisdom and immortality – are connected in other <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/from-creation-to-abraham-9780567703118/">ancient myths</a>. In <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/myths-from-mesopotamia-9780199538362?cc=us&lang=en&">one legend from Mesopotamia</a>, for example, in modern-day Iraq, the first human is named Adapa.</p>
<p>Ea, the god who created Adapa, gives him wisdom from the start. Ea then offers the man food that would lead to immortality but tricks Adapa into refusing it. The result is that humans have some wisdom, like the gods, but are not immortal and cannot challenge the divine.</p>
<p>Similarly, the two trees in Genesis display how humanity is both like and unlike God. According to other texts in the Bible, <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Psalms.82?lang=bi">such as Psalm 82</a>, divinity is characterized by immortality and a concern for justice. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, giving humanity some sense of self-awareness, justice and, ideally, care for the poor and oppressed. Humans did not consume the tree of life, however, creating a distinction between them and the divine.</p>
<h2>Living wisdom</h2>
<p>In Genesis, readers are introduced to “the” tree of life, with the definite article – implying there is only one such tree.</p>
<p>Later in the Bible, however, “a” tree of life appears four times in <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.1?lang=bi">the Book of Proverbs</a>, a complex anthology that collects many sayings and gems of wisdom from the ancient world. A possible, though by no means certain, allusion also appears in <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Ezekiel.47.12?lang=bi">the Book of Ezekiel</a>.</p>
<p>Some of these passages in Proverbs use the imagery of a tree of life as a positive contrast to sickness, <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.13.13?lang=bi">languishing</a> or <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.15.4?lang=bi">broken spirits</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.11.30?lang=bi">Other verses</a> connect knowledge and a tree of life. <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Proverbs.3.18?lang=bi">Proverbs 3:18</a>, for example, instructs that wisdom “is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy.”</p>
<p>Jewish tradition frequently pictures God’s teachings and scripture, <a href="https://www.reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-tree-life">the Torah</a>, as the tree of life – deepening this connection between life and wisdom.</p>
<h2>Reaching up to God</h2>
<p>In Genesis, the tree of life is a symbol of the divide between humanity and divinity. In the Bible’s wisdom literature, however, it comes to represent how knowledge, wisdom and Torah connect God and Israel. Both meanings continued to evolve in a strain of Jewish mysticism <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/662">known as Kabbalah</a>, which <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140910/nahmanides/">has roots in the 13th century</a></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A faded manuscript page with intricate illustrations of plants." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532096/original/file-20230615-17-48uxzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Kabbalistic tree in an illustration from around 1625.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/arbor-cabalistica-ca-1625-private-collection-artist-news-photo/600047287?adppopup=true">Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=30152">most famous texts</a> of Kabbalah discuss the relationship between humanity and divinity in terms of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300046991/kabbalah/">God’s attributes</a>, such as righteousness, justice and beauty. These attributes, called “sefirot,” are often drawn as spheres, linked with branchlike lines as though they form a “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reading-the-zohar-9780195118490?cc=us&lang=en&">tree of life</a>” – a tree that connects human experience on Earth to an infinite God above.</p>
<p>Mystical tradition sees these pathways through the “sefirot” not only as a means of connecting divinity and humanity, but also as a means of repairing our broken world, where believers may feel that the divine is often absent.</p>
<p>According to these teachings, when people access spheres on the tree of life through mystical reflection and study, they aid in “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1174">tikkun olam</a>,” the repair of the world. </p>
<p>It is no wonder, then, that the tree of life holds so much significance for Jewish communities. Like the synagogue in Pittsburgh, they can experience tragedy, even as they continue seeking ways to heal a broken world. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story was updated on Aug. 3, 2023 to include the gunman’s sentencing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel L. Boyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the beginning of the Bible, the tree of life represents what sets humans apart from divinity – but other texts use the symbol to depict mankind’s relationship with God.Samuel L. Boyd, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1925622022-10-25T16:11:20Z2022-10-25T16:11:20ZHow we found microbes rarer than a ticket to the Moon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491402/original/file-20221024-1609-73un2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3834%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Legendrea loyezae, a very rare ciliate that lives in oxygen-free sediments of lakes</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Weiss</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You are more likely to take a trip to the Moon than to see a microbe called <em>Legendrea loyezae</em> under a microscope. Nasa’s Apollo programme has sent a total of 24 people to the Moon <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-moon/#:%7E:text=Neil%20Armstrong%20and%20Edwin%20%22Buzz,Harrison%20Schmitt%20(Apollo%2017)">between 1968 and 1972</a>. Only four people (including us) have ever found <em>Legendrea loyezae</em> from its discovery in 1908 to our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2022.125912">recently published study</a>. </p>
<p>Considering the expense, it makes sense that the number of people who journeyed to the Moon would be low. But peeking into the microscopic realm doesn’t require a billion-dollar budget, only a microscope and someone willing to sit in front of it. </p>
<p>Our recent study uncovered <a href="https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/2022-09-30/discovery-new-microscopic-species-expands-tree-life">20 new species</a> of microbes as well as 100 rare ones. Each DNA specimen we find gives another <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2022.125912">piece of the evolution puzzle</a>. Scientists can use this jigsaw to analyse how an organism works. For example, some genes hint about how a being respires. Or it can give information about the organism’s place on the tree of life. </p>
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<p>The reason so few scientists have seen these microbes is because undersampling is a major issue. This means most research teams take samples from only a few or even just one location. </p>
<p>Our most recent investigation, which took two years, involved the collection and investigation of well over 1,000 samples. From the lakes and ponds in Warsaw, Poland, to marine sediments in the North Sea, and the Mediterranean off the coasts of Italy and Portugal, to chalk streams in Dorset, UK we searched for microbes. And it paid off: we found more than 500 species, including the rare and new ones. </p>
<h2>Microbiology is human history</h2>
<p>The first life on Earth appeared in water as creatures too small for the human eye to see and <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-59979-9">stayed that way</a> for billions of years. Microbes <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-59979-9">live all around us</a>. They can be found in any habitat, from puddles to oceans. But there is still so much we don’t know about them. Some of these microscopic organisms evolved from simple to more complex beings, eventually giving rise to all the visible life around us. Others have <a href="https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/one-plus-one-equals-one-9780198758129?cc=&lang=en&q=archibald">hardly changed</a> and kept their minute size. </p>
<p>Microorganisms were the first predators on Earth and their greedy appetites drove the evolution of more complex life in the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-origin-and-early-evolution-of-life-9780198525332?cc=gb&lang=en&">early ages</a> of Earth’s history. After the evolution of complex life, microbes became the main food source for other creatures such as krill and plankton, which in turn are food for larger species. If the organisms at the very bottom of the food chain disappeared, <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-59979-9">all other parts</a> above them would collapse too. </p>
<p>The timescale of this is so long it’s hard to grasp. If we squeezed Earth’s 4.5 billion years old history into a single year, life would exist on a microscopic scale until the end of October. Humans would appear on the last 30 minutes of the year, and we would be aware of the existence of the microbes just less than three seconds before the new year.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491682/original/file-20221025-23-wflr31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The tree of life maps organisms relationships to each other.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/phylogenetic-tree-phylogeny-evolutionary-classification-outline-2022624131">VectorMine/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Tree of Life shows how organisms are related to each other. Looking at it, you can see most life on Earth is still micro scale, with animals, plants and fungi restricted to a small cluster of branches within the eukarya group. In contrast to the other two groups, archaea and bacteria, eukarya members store their DNA in the cell nucleus.</p>
<h2>A microscopic rarity</h2>
<p><em>Legendrea loyezae</em> is in the ciliates branch of eukarya. Oxygen is lethal for <em>Legendrea loyezae</em> and it has tentacles that stretch and contract to catch prey. Scientists have <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4020-8239-9">discovered thousands</a> of ciliate species. </p>
<p>Ciliates live in aquatic environments, thin water films in soils and even places where there is no oxygen. Although their lives depend on water, they can form protective structures to stay dormant until they get wet again. They are composed of only a single cell and yet they are wondrously diverse. Ciliates have interesting hunting strategies – some types specialise in eating filaments of cyanobacteria, which they suck up like spaghetti. They can swim. Others have a sedentary lifestyle, including <em>Vorticella</em>, which has a stalk to attach itself to submerged surfaces. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491672/original/file-20221025-19-pmscyu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Vorticella</em>, a ciliate that has a stalk to attach itself to surfaces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Weiss</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some ciliate species form permanent, physical relationships with other groups of organisms, something known as symbiosis. For example, they can <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1434461010000738">harbour green algae</a> inside themselves to eat the sugar the algae produce through photosynthesis. In exchange, they protect the algae from larger algae-grazers and viruses (yes, even algae can get viral infections). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491668/original/file-20221025-14-83besr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loxodes rostrum, a ciliate with endosymbiotic green algae.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Weiss</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Some ciliate species live in densely populated communities, especially in well-oxygenated environments. But others live in such small numbers that finding them is like searching for a thousand needles in a haystack the size of Mount Everest. </p>
<p>Our goal is to find as many of these rare and unusual species as we can. We use our knowledge of species’ ecology as clues. If we know that a microbe prefers to live in dark, oxygen-free habitats we don’t look for it on the surface of the water where there is plenty of oxygen and light. It took thousands of hours looking through a microscope to find four <em>Legendrea loyezae</em>, not to mention a small fortune on physiotherapy for our cricked necks and aching backs. </p>
<h2>Why microbes matter</h2>
<p>It’s easy to feel detached from the invisible microbes. Most of us will never get to see one magnified enough for our eyesight to pick up. But learning about microbes has helped inform some of the most important scientific discoveries in history. Microbes take life as they inflict <a href="https://microbiologysociety.org/why-microbiology-matters/what-is-microbiology/microbes-and-the-human-body/microbes-and-disease.html">animal and plant diseases</a> and develop massive blooms in the sea that wipe out aquaculture farms. </p>
<p>But we couldn’t live without them. Microbes are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/463293c">responsible for the survival</a> of our ecosystems and for their recovery after damage such as pollution or climate change. We can’t grow food without microorganisms. They clean our sewage. Some can produce antibiotics and other drugs, others are involved in the production of food. </p>
<p>So exploring the microbial world is well worth the backache.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Genoveva Esteban receives funding from the European Union and other funding organisations. She works for Bournemouth University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Weiss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Microbes are so tiny humans can’t see them without special equipment. But the discovery of 20 new species will help scientists map the evolutionary tree of life.Genoveva Esteban, Professor of Microbial Ecology, Bournemouth UniversityJames Weiss, Researcher, Microbiology, Bournemouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1590272021-04-27T12:12:40Z2021-04-27T12:12:40ZFBI reaches out to Hasidic Jews to fight antisemitism – but bureau has fraught history with Judaism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396608/original/file-20210422-19-1ntgiqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4468%2C2969&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">FBI announcements in Yiddish encourage Hasidic or "ultra-Orthodox" Jews to report incidents of anti-Semitism.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hasidic-man-walks-by-the-maimonides-medical-center-on-news-photo/1287323694?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The FBI wants to hear from Hasidim, or “ultra-Orthodox” Jews. The Hate Crimes Unit said as much when it issued announcements – in both <a href="https://www.jns.org/fbi-releases-ads-in-yiddish-and-hebrew-to-encourage-reporting-of-hate-crimes/">Yiddish and Hebrew</a> – asking Jews to report antisemitic incidents in an outreach campaign launched in April 2021. </p>
<p>The campaign follows <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/FY-2019-Hate-Crimes">highly visible antisemitic incidents</a> in the U.S. in recent years, including the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which left <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html">11 people dead</a>.</p>
<p>Hasidic Jews make up the overwhelming majority of Yiddish speakers in the U.S. They number about 320,000 adults, according to Matt Williams, director of the <a href="https://research.ou.org/">Orthodox Union for Communal Research</a>. Outreach to this community poses distinctive challenges because <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46122-9_5">Hasidic communities can be insular</a>, often seeking to address issues from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/nyregion/yeshivas-education-report-new-york.html">education</a> to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjwd8w/the-ultra-orthodox-jewish-communitys-sex-abuse-crisis-has-finally-reached-a-tipping-point">sexual assault</a> without involving outsiders. </p>
<p>As someone who has written about <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6C7WNI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Jews and the FBI</a>, I am not surprised that the FBI now wants to address antisemitism. But the FBI has a complicated <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N6C7WNI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">history with Jews</a>. It is a past that suggests the FBI has loved the idea of Judaism as a religion, but not necessarily American Jews themselves.</p>
<h2>Cold War embrace</h2>
<p>Officially founded in 1935, the FBI was designed to take on domestic crime and surveillance. By the late 1940s, driven by Cold War ideals, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover bolstered an image of the U.S. as <a href="https://oxfordre.com/religion/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-398">religious and moral</a> as opposed to its enemy – an atheistic, immoral Soviet Union. Embracing Judaism as good, lawful and American was strategic.</p>
<p>During his prepared remarks at a 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee hearing, Hoover called communism an “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/hoover-speech-before-the-house-committee-speech-text/">evil work</a>” and “a cause that is alien to the religion of Christ and Judaism.” He believed that the U.S. had a superior moral foundation – a religious one – and that communism was built on nothing but human iniquity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is presented an award in 1953" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396612/original/file-20210422-17-2ffhq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (right) is presented a medal in 1953 for his efforts to fight communism in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/HooverGetsAward/2f904967c3fb4d3db7923f87fb781eeb">William J. Smith/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Claiming for the U.S. a <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo43987703.html">“Judeo-Christian” heritage</a>, as became <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2712839">popular in the 1950s</a>, supported the Cold War cause in another way too. It subtly referred to both God and democracy, and implied that both were on the side of Americans.</p>
<p>Instead of merely emphasizing Christianity, the phrase also allowed <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spiritual-industrial-complex-9780195393460?cc=us&lang=en&">Hoover and others</a> to tout what they perceived as the U.S.’s religious tolerance and inclusiveness. Since many Christians imagined Judaism as a precursor to Christianity, Judaism could signal diversity and democracy without seeming foreign. In practice, this meant that references to Judaism were not about anything distinctively Jewish but rather about what people thought it shared with Christianity, like the <a href="https://jwa.org/media/ten-commandments">Ten Commandments</a>.</p>
<h2>Anti-Jewish prejudice</h2>
<p>But there was a complication to the FBI’s embrace of Judaism. By the 1950s, U.S. Jews had a <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674032439">long history with the political left</a>, including support of the Socialist and Communist parties, which the FBI saw as threats. </p>
<p>“Communists have been, still are, and always will be a menace to freedom, to democratic ideals, to the worship of God and to the American way of life,” <a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/hoover-speech-before-the-house-committee-speech-text/">Hoover told</a> the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. </p>
<p>FBI officials and records associated Jews with communism. An American Jewish Committee document from this period reported that the <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/the-holocaust-in-american-life/9780618082322">FBI estimated</a> that 50% to 60% of U.S. communists were Jews. </p>
<p>These accusations and investigations had sometimes devastating effects. The Jewish actor Philip Loeb died by suicide after he was blacklisted from Hollywood and investigated by the FBI and could no longer work to support his disabled son. He overdosed on barbiturates in a New York hotel room. Days later, the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520962422-010/html">FBI cleared him</a> of being a member of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>Internal FBI workings also demonstrated assumptions about Jews and communism as well as strategic sympathy to anti-Jewish prejudice. When an informant told agent Jack Levine that all Jews were communists, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-Fear-Anti-Communist-Truman-Eisenhower/dp/0671248480">Levine was instructed</a> to keep it out of his written report so that the bias could not discredit the informant. It did not appear to concern the FBI that the bias meant the informant might not be truthful. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Visitors mark one-year anniversary of mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396609/original/file-20210422-21-ltul4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Visitors mark the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitors-look-at-inspired-artworks-along-the-fence-at-the-news-photo/1178629458?adppopup=true">Jeff Swensen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The FBI today is hardly the same organization that it was during the Cold War, but its sympathies for Judaism do have historical resonance. In 1958, bombers <a href="http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1971_23_02_00_shankman.pdf">dynamited The Temple</a>, the synagogue of the oldest Jewish congregation in Atlanta. The blast killed no one but caused at least US$100,000 in damage. President Eisenhower told Hoover to send the FBI to investigate, and Hoover quickly complied, even though it may not have been under the FBI’s jurisdiction. <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520962422-010/html">Hoover saw the bombing</a> as an attack on religion, and so it was an attack on the country. </p>
<p>With this history in mind, Yiddish and Hebrew announcements soliciting information from Jewish religious communities should come as no surprise – especially because some antisemitic attacks in the U.S. have taken place in religious spaces. For many, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh looks like an attack on America because it is an attack on Judaism, even on religion. Outreach to Hasidim – the American Jews who look the most religious – has become one way the FBI wants to stop those attacks.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Imhoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the Cold War, the FBI boasted a ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage in the US but also demonstrated anti-Jewish prejudice.Sarah Imhoff, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1325362020-03-02T15:13:29Z2020-03-02T15:13:29ZEvolution: that famous ‘march of progress’ image is just wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318090/original/file-20200302-18279-gzulvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/human-evolution-vector-illustration-man-historical-365697050">Usagi-P/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Evolution explains how all living beings, including us, came to be. It would be easy to assume evolution works by continuously adding features to organisms, constantly increasing their complexity. Some fish evolved legs and walked onto the land. Some dinosaurs evolved wings and began to fly. Others evolved wombs and began to give birth to live young.</p>
<p>Yet this is one of the most predominant and frustrating <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-five-most-common-misunderstandings-about-evolution-54845">misconceptions about evolution</a>. Many successful branches of the tree of life have stayed simple, such as bacteria, or have reduced their complexity, such as parasites. And they are doing very well.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1129-2">recent study</a> published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we compared the complete genomes of over 100 organisms (mostly animals), to study how the animal kingdom has evolved at the genetic level. Our results show that the origins of major groups of animals, such as the one comprising humans, are linked not to the addition of new genes but to massive gene losses.</p>
<p>The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould was one of the strongest opponents of “<a href="https://sites.wustl.edu/prosper/on-the-origins-of-the-march-of-progress/">the march of progress</a>”, the idea that evolution always results in increased complexity. In his book <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674061613">Full House</a> (1996), Gould uses the model of the drunkard walk. A drunkard leaves a bar in a train station and clumsily walks back and forth over the platform, swinging between the bar and the train tracks. Given enough time, the drunkard will fall in the tracks and will get stuck there.</p>
<p>The platform represents a scale of complexity, the pub being the lowest complexity and the tracks the maximum. Life emerged by coming out of the pub, with the minimum complexity possible. Sometimes it randomly stumbles towards the tracks (evolving in a way that increases complexity) and other times towards the pub (reducing complexity).</p>
<p>No option is better than the other. Staying simple or reducing complexity may be better for survival than evolving with increased complexity, depending on the environment.</p>
<p>But in some cases, groups of animals evolve complex features that are intrinsic to the way their bodies work, and can no longer lose those genes to become simpler - they become stuck in the train tracks. (There are no trains to worry about in this metaphor.) For example, multicellular organisms rarely go back to become unicellular.</p>
<p>If we only focus on the organisms trapped in the train tracks, then we have a biased perception of life evolving in a straight line from simple to complex, mistakenly believing that older lifeforms are always simple and newer ones are complex. But the real path to complexity is more tortuous.</p>
<p>Together with Peter Holland from the University of Oxford, we looked into how genetic complexity has evolved in animals. Previously, <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-reconstructed-the-genome-of-the-first-animal-95900">we have shown</a> that the addition of new genes was key to the early evolution of the animal kingdom. The question then became whether that was the case during the later evolution of animals.</p>
<h2>Studying the tree of life</h2>
<p>Most animals can be grouped into <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-animals-went-from-single-cells-to-over-30-different-body-types-102602">major evolutionary lineages</a>, branches on the tree of life showing how the animals alive today evolved from a series of shared ancestors. In order to answer our question, we studied every animal lineage for which a genome sequence was publicly available, and many non-animal lineages to compare them against. </p>
<p>One animal lineage is that of the deuterostomes, which includes humans and other vertebrates, as well as sea stars or sea urchins. Another is the ecdysozoans, comprising the arthropods (insects, lobsters, spiders, millipedes), and other moulting animals such as roundworms. Vertebrates and insects are considered some of the most complex animals. Finally, we have one lineage, the lophotrochozoans, that includes animals such as molluscs (snails, for example) or annelids (earthworms), among many others.</p>
<p>We took this diverse selection of organisms and looked to see how they were related on the tree of life and what genes they shared and didn’t share. If a gene was present in an older branch of the tree and not in a younger one, we inferred that this gene had been lost. If a gene wasn’t present in older branches but appeared in a younger branch, then we considered it a novel gene that had been gained in the younger branch.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318056/original/file-20200302-18266-10tdctx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tree of life diagram showing the changing number of genes of different animal groups. Downward pointing orange triangles indicate gene losses. Upwards pointing green triangles indicate gene gains. The bigger the triangle, the greater the change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordi Paps</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The results showed unprecedented numbers of genes lost and gained, something never seen before in previous analyses. Two of the major lineages, the deuterostomes (including humans) and the ecdysozoans (including insects), showed the largest number of gene losses. In contrast, the lophotrochozoans show a balance between gene novelties and losses.</p>
<p>Our results confirm the picture given by Stephen Jay Gould by showing that, at the gene level, animal life emerged by leaving the pub and making a large leap in complexity. But after the initial enthusiasm, some lineages stumbled closer to the pub by losing genes, while other lineages drifted towards the track by gaining genes. We consider this the perfect summary of evolution, a booze-induced random choice between the bar and the train track. Or, as the internet meme says, “<a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/go-home-evolution-youre-drunk-5976895">go home evolution, you are drunk</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132536/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows animal evolution often involves losing genes and becoming less complex.Jordi Paps, Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, University of BristolCristina Guijarro-Clarke, PhD Candidate in Evolution, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1260042019-11-25T13:25:57Z2019-11-25T13:25:57ZHow American anti-Semitism reflects the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of religious liberty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303011/original/file-20191121-483-guw6ju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mother hugs her son at the memorial of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2019, the first anniversary of the shooting at the synagogue.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Synagogue-Shooting-Anniversary/13d1bb8783f348378e150ad1ce4e2047/11/0">AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Americans recently observed the <a href="https://patch.com/pennsylvania/pittsburgh/tree-life-synagogue-shootings-solemn-anniversary">first anniversary</a> of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which 11 were killed and six wounded. </p>
<p>A year earlier, white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanted the slogan, “Jews shall not replace us.” </p>
<p>Synagogues around the country have also been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. Last month, during the Jewish High Holy Days, a swastika and the word “Trump” were <a href="https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/On-High-Holy-Days-anti-Semitic-graffiti-found-on-14503157.php">spray-painted on the steps of the law school</a> at Yale University, where I teach. </p>
<p>This is not the first time that hate speech and violence against Jews and other racial and religious minorities have flared in the U.S. Recent events mirror the situation in the early 20th century, when white Christian nationalists in the United States demonized immigrants and treated Jews as a danger to the nation.</p>
<p>Then, as now, people on all sides of these disputes invoked the American ideal of religious freedom. As I show in my book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">Religious Freedom</a>,” while some Americans used this constitutional protection to justify a politics of exclusion, others drew a widening circle of inclusion.</p>
<h2>The politics of exclusion</h2>
<p>At the turn of the 20th century, white Christian nationalists saw Jews and other religious outsiders as threats to the nation and used religious freedom as a weapon against them.</p>
<p>In 1892, writing for an anti-Semitic publication “<a href="https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf/Record/405611661">Sound the Tocsin of Alarm</a>,” Orville Jones, a lawyer and Methodist layman from Missouri, warned that the Jew had a “persistent determination… to practice fraud, extortion, and especially usury.” </p>
<p>He went on to add that “the Jew” was now recruiting others to join “his crime against civilization.” </p>
<p>Jones was on the extreme end, to be sure, but Jews at the time experienced <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/479563">serious discrimination</a> on both racial and religious grounds. Jewish merchants were brutally assaulted in Mississippi in the 1890s and violent attacks occurred across the country in subsequent decades. Many universities limited Jewish enrollment, while some institutions banned Jews altogether. </p>
<p>Congress implemented strict immigration quotas in the 1920s, in an effort to keep Jews and other racially defined minorities out of the country. Jewish immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, were treated as a distinct race and increasingly excluded from the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691136318/the-price-of-whiteness">privileges of whiteness</a> in American life.</p>
<p>This might seem to be a blatant violation of religious freedom. But white Christian nationalists like Orville Jones used this very ideal to justify exclusionary and sometimes violent policies against Jews and other minority groups. They claimed that Jews posed a direct threat to American freedom. </p>
<p>“Again the Sons of the Republic are called upon,” <a href="https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf/Record/405611661">he wrote</a>, “to fight the initial battle of the world’s hope for civil and religious liberty.” This struggle had to be waged against what he called the “sneaking cowardly cruel indirect power” of the Jew. </p>
<p>He and others like him believed they were fighting for the religious freedom of America’s white Christian majority.</p>
<h2>The call for inclusion</h2>
<p>American Jews fought back, using this same ideal of religious freedom to counter discrimination and violence. </p>
<p>Most Americans in the early 20th century, even those who were inclined to support Jewish rights, viewed Jews as a distinct race. As I show in <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">my book</a>, the Federal Council of Churches tackled the problem of anti-Semitism in the early 1920s with the expressed goal of ending “racial antipathies” and creating a new “spirit of brotherhood” in American life. </p>
<p>Americans at this time did not think of race simply as a matter of skin color, and even Jews sometimes spoke of themselves as a separate race. They celebrated the historical achievements of the Hebrew race or nation.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302969/original/file-20191121-515-1joyz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jewish refugee children salute the American flag in June 1939, at a suburban Philadelphia estate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Pennsylva-/a664a9558ff24d159e7629d8e81b944f/112/0">AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>At the same time, American Jews had for generations insisted that the American promise of religious freedom must also apply to them. </p>
<p>Oscar Straus, for example, who served as treasury secretary under President Theodore Roosevelt, was an amateur historian who located the intellectual foundations of religious freedom <a href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=7006&recCount=25&recPointer=1&bibId=8673192">in the Hebrew Bible</a>. He even named his son Roger Williams Straus after Rhode Island’s colonial champion of this freedom. </p>
<p>The younger Straus, a successful businessman in New York, was also a strong proponent of religious freedom. He took on a leading role in the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">National Conference of Christians and Jews </a>, which fought Nazi anti-Semitism in the 1930s through public events that featured Protestants, Catholics and Jews speaking on topics of common interest. </p>
<p>Together they argued for religious freedom and toleration as the best defense against bigotry and violence. They also identified Judaism as a religion to be respected and given the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In so doing, they were fighting the anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews as an inferior race who were inherently disloyal to the United States and its ideals. </p>
<p>As Nazi armies moved across Europe, Straus’ book “<a href="https://browse.nypl.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb13462353__SStraus%2C%20Roger%20Williams%2C%201891__Orightresult__X3?lang=eng&suite=def">Religious Liberty and Democracy</a>” issued a desperate plea for unity against the anti-religious totalitarianism of the world. </p>
<p>One effect of all this was to redefine Jewish communal identity in religious terms. For American Jews, and eventually for most other Americans as well, being Jewish was increasingly a matter of religion more than it was about racial or national difference.</p>
<p>Because Jews were no longer considered a separate race, those who appeared white could now gain the privileges of <a href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=7146&recCount=25&recPointer=0&bibId=3560545">whiteness</a> in American life.</p>
<h2>The ambivalent promise of religious freedom</h2>
<p>After World War II Judaism was accepted as an integral part of a new American religious triad – Protestant, Catholic and Jew. In his <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3640906.html">1955 book</a>, sociologist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/28/archives/will-herberg-author-dies-at-75-communist-became-conservative.html">Will Herberg</a> argued that these three faiths now shaped what it meant to be religious in America and defined who could be considered a real American.</p>
<p>But as I <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">argue in my book</a>, this tri-faith celebration of American religious freedom could also obscure the ongoing problem of racism in American life. </p>
<p>One African American commentator <a href="https://search.proquest.com/docview/201967728?accountid=15172">wrote in 1933</a> that while the “nice liberals” of the National Conference of Christians and Jews may have been tackling the bigotries of religion, their discussion groups never included a “Negro.” And they were strangely silent on “the worst intolerance of all: color prejudice.” </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303013/original/file-20191121-474-y4b3cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Community members protest about an alleged hate crime against Muslims in the Astoria section of the Queens borough of New York in December 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Anti-Muslim-Backlash/777cef9221b04c0da4eff5926b0babcb/38/0">AP Photo/Seth Wenig</a></span>
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<p>Atheists and other religious minorities – such as Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and practitioners of Indigenous traditions – also remained <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807857700/a-nation-of-religions/">on the margins</a> of this culturally reconfigured “American.” </p>
<p>Religious freedom is a powerful tool that can expand the bounds of who and what counts as religious. At the same time, my research has taught me that appeals for religious freedom can be exclusionary, often in unintended ways. We cannot allow white Christian nationalists to define its limits.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tisa Wenger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US Constitution is supposed to protect freedom of religion. But in the 20th century, white Christian nationalists used this ideal to discriminate against Jews and justify their exclusion.Tisa Wenger, Associate Professor of American Religious History, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174882019-05-22T18:22:52Z2019-05-22T18:22:52ZI’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275931/original/file-20190522-187153-bh64rh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do fungi like this _Penicillium_ mold, which produces the the antibiotic penicillin, trace their origins to an ancestor that lived a billion years ago?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/penicillium-ascomycetous-fungi-major-importance-natural-747671938?src=Fh67ni9zEuTtVW02o3u5sA-1-4">Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Biologists don’t call them “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037r5dc">the hidden kingdom</a>” for nothing. With an estimated 5 million species, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3732/ajb.1000298">only a mere 100,000 fungi</a> are known to scientists. This kingdom, which includes molds, yeasts, rusts and mushrooms, receives far less attention than plants or animals. This is particularly true for fossils of fungi, most of which are discovered while <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/fossil-fungi/taylor/978-0-12-387731-4">hunting for more charismatic, at least to the eyes of some, plant fossils</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1105">Fungi were key partners of plants during their colonization of land</a> approximately 500 million years ago – an important and well-documented evolutionary transition. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the earliest fungal fossils, found in 450 million-year-old rocks, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5486.1920">resemble modern species associated with the roots of plants</a>. But that conflicts with DNA-based estimates, which suggest that fungi originated much earlier – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fbr.2010.03.001">a billion or more years ago</a>. It’s a riddle in the tree of life that evolutionary biologists like me have long been puzzled about.</p>
<h2>Fossils versus DNA</h2>
<p>For years scientists have tried to reconcile the fungal fossil record with estimates from analyses of fungal DNA. But some of their key morphological characters – that is, the shapes they take – can only be established via microscopic and chemical analyses. That includes the complex networks of microscopic thread-like filaments and cell walls made of chitin, which are also not visible to the naked eye. The effort seemed hopeless, until now.</p>
<p>Corentin Loron, a graduate student at the University of Liege in Belgium and colleagues, discovered microscopic, fossilized specimens of a fungus called <em>Ourasphaira giraldae</em> in shale rock from the Grassy Bay Formation in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Given that <em>Ourasphaira</em> is found on 1,000- to 900-million-year-old rocks, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1217-0">the new fossil</a> pushes back the origin of fungi by half a billion years. </p>
<h2>A very revealing fossil</h2>
<p>But how did Loron deduce that these fossils are fungi? While most of us are quite familiar with the large reproductive structures of some fungi, such as mushrooms, most of us are less familiar with the fungal network of microscopic thread-like filaments that makes up their “bodies.” </p>
<p>Microscopical analyses of <em>Ourasphaira</em> show that it formed a network just like those made by modern fungi; and chemical analyses show that the cell walls of these microfossils contain chitin, again just like modern fungi. </p>
<p>The implications of this discovery are twofold. </p>
<p>First, the fossil singlehandedly reconciles DNA-based and paleontological estimates of fungal origins, pushing back the origin of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KDzfXCptJbQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA127&dq=related:rLbirdwggWsJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=lAQI8TOJoG&sig=V5r942dlmr-9HRW0JUDiIIKQvqU#v=onepage&q&f=false">Opisthokonta</a>, a supergroup comprising fungi, animals and their single-celled relatives to at least a billion years ago. And second, the fossil gives us clues about the environments where the first fungi lived. <em>Ourasphaira</em> was found in a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/shale">shale</a>, a type of rock that forms at the muddy bottom of lakes and rivers. Since this particular shale appears to have been formed as a result of sedimentation from a shallow-water estuary, it may be the first fungi evolved where rivers met the seas a billion years ago. </p>
<p>It’s one more clue that helps fill in the picture on how life on earth evolved and one more step toward bringing this fascinating group of organisms to the limelight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117488/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antonis Rokas receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, the Beckman Scholars Program and the March of Dimes.</span></em></p>The discovery of a fungus fossil is pushing back the origin of these ancient organisms and rewriting what we know about evolution and the tree of life.Antonis Rokas, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Biological Sciences and Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1058952018-10-30T10:44:19Z2018-10-30T10:44:19ZHow Mister Rogers’ message of love might help us now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242761/original/file-20181029-76396-1ey2it8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Squirrel Hill neighbors embrace, after hearing of the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue, Oct. 27, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Shooting-Synagogue/91567575c57b4b95a76566337731be9a/32/0">Keith Srakocic/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Pittsburgh neighborhood in which the recent horrific mass shooting took place isn’t only the home of the Tree of Life synagogue. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/10/27/squirrel-hill-jewish-enclave-mr-rogers-neighborhood-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting/1789806002/">Squirrel Hill</a> was also Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, the place where he lived and ultimately chose to die in his own home. </p>
<p>The irony is bitter indeed, because <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/arts/mister-rogers-tv-s-friend-for-children-is-dead-at-74.html">Fred McFeely Rogers</a>, the beloved children’s television host who died in 2003, was also an ordained Presbyterian minister. Over the course of three decades on public broadcasting, he brought to millions of children what his faith’s <a href="https://www.pcusa.org/resource/minutes-215th-general-assembly-2003-part-i-journal/">General Assembly</a> referred to as “unconditional love.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/mr-rogers-documentary-wont-you-be-my-neighbor-reviewed.html">documentary</a> on Rogers released earlier this year, his widow reveals that this apostle of love struggled with evil in its many forms all his life. In his day as in ours, he knew that young people would be exposed to innumerable images of hatred through television and other media. To counteract it, Rogers took to the airways, encouraging people of all ages to accept themselves and each other. As he said in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/464_US_417.htm#464us417n27">1979</a>, “My whole approach in broadcasting has always been, ‘You are an important person just the way you are.’”</p>
<p>Rogers was on to something – namely, that the world needs more love, and that each of us can play an important role in making the world a kinder place.</p>
<h2>Love gave rise to a calling</h2>
<p>Born in Pennsylvania in 1928, as a young minister Rogers regretted the messages television was conveying to children in the 1960s. He <a href="https://www.salon.com/1999/08/10/rogers_2/">said</a>, “I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there’s some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” debuted nationally in 1968 and won its creator and host many <a href="https://www.fredrogers.org/fred-rogers/bio/">accolades</a>, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, two Peabody Awards and over 40 honorary degrees.</p>
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<span class="caption">Fred Rogers with President George W. Bush, who is about to place the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rogers in a July 9, 2002, ceremony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/ce46a8a7dfe6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">Kenneth Lambert/AP Photo</a></span>
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<p>Rogers believed that the need to love and be loved was universal, and he sought to cultivate these capacities through every program, saying in a 2004 <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433376/">documentary</a> hosted by actor Michael Keaton, one of his former stagehands, “You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And consequently, the greatest thing we can do is to help somebody know they’re loved and capable of loving.” It turns out that in encouraging people to love one another, Rogers was actually helping us take better care of ourselves.</p>
<h2>Love and health</h2>
<p>There are many ways in which love and kindness are good for health, especially in such difficult times. For one thing, they tend to reduce <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27100366">factors</a> that undermine it. Doing something nice for someone causes the release of endorphins, which help to relieve pain. People who make kindness a habit have lower levels of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/17/460030338/be-kind-unwind-how-helping-others-can-help-keep-stress-in-check">stress hormones</a> such as cortisol. Intentionally helping others can even lower levels of <a href="https://health.clevelandclinic.org/acts-kindness-can-ease-social-anxiety/">anxiety</a> in individuals who normally avoid social situations.</p>
<p>Carrying out acts of kindness, or even merely <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_our_bodies_react_human_goodness">witnessing</a> them, also increases levels of <a href="https://www.hormone.org/hormones-and-health/hormones/oxytocin">oxytocin</a>, a hormone with <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0ac8/c14228b62b9c87636f5b6eb536a434fd04de.pdf">health benefits</a> as diverse as lowering blood pressure, promoting good sleep and reducing cravings for drugs such as cocaine and alcohol. Who wasn’t touched and uplifted by the news that one of the nurses treating the shooter is Jewish, and that the Jewish president of the hospital where he was treated stopped in to check on him? </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Dr. Jeff Cohen, president of Allegheny General Hospital and a member of Tree of Life synagogue.</span></figcaption>
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<p>That oxytocin should have so many health benefits is not so surprising when we recall its central role in stimulating uterine contractions during birth, the letdown of milk during lactation, the pleasure associated with orgasm and pair bonding.</p>
<p>Acts of generosity and compassion also appear to be good for mood. A <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11189976/dunn,%20aknin,%20norton_prosocial_cdips.pdf?sequence=1">2010 study</a> showed that while people with money tend to be somewhat happier than those without it, people who spend money on others report even greater levels of happiness, an effect that can be detected even in toddlers. When people give money to others, areas of the brain associated with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17569866">pleasure</a> are activated, and this response is greater when the transfer is voluntary rather than mandatory.</p>
<p>Such happiness can have big benefits in longevity. For example, a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1758-0854.2010.01045.x">review</a> of 160 published studies concluded that there is compelling evidence that life satisfaction and optimism are associated with better health and enhanced longevity. Another <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/10/happiness-associated-longer-life">study</a> of older people showed that, even after correcting for other factors such as age, disease and health habits, those who rated their happiness highest were 35 percent less likely to die in five years than those who were least content.</p>
<h2>What would Mister Rogers say?</h2>
<p>Of course, Rogers would remind us that there are reasons to be committed to love and kindness that extend far beyond their health benefits. Rogers was, after all, not a physician but a minister, and ultimately he was ministering to an aspect of human wholeness that cannot be analyzed by blood tests or visualized with CT scans. In a <a href="https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2018/03/revisiting-fred-rogers-2002-commencement-address">commencement address</a> at Dartmouth College in 2002, he focused less on the body than what he might have called the spirit:</p>
<p>“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222240/original/file-20180607-137309-1diror5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A pair of Mister Rogers’ sneakers at the LBJ Library exhibition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pres. Johnson signing the public broadcasting act in 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jay Godwin/LBJ Foundation</span></span>
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<p>When Rogers encouraged children to be kinder and more loving, he believed that he was not only promoting public health but also nurturing the most important part of a human being – the part that exhibits a divine spark. As Rogers indicated in another <a href="https://archive.org/details/rogers_speech_5_27_01">commencement speech</a> the year before at Middlebury College, “I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred.”</p>
<p>In expressing such deeply religious sentiments, Rogers was not trying to undermine a concern with bodily health. In fact, he regularly encouraged his viewers to adopt healthy life habits, and Rogers himself was a committed <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-g-long/what-would-mister-rogers-eat_b_6193910.html">vegetarian</a> and lifelong swimmer who maintained a low body weight his entire life. Yet he also believed that health alone does not a full life make, and he regarded the soundness of the body as but part of the wellness of whole persons and communities, which may explain why he was able to face his own mortality with such equanimity.</p>
<p>Rogers’ message could not be more relevant to a time of mass shootings driven by blind hatred. Just a few months before he died, Rogers recorded a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-fred-rogers-heart-warming-final-message-grownup-fans">message</a> for the many adult fans who had grown up watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” In it, he practiced what he preached, saying:</p>
<p>“I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger. I like you just the way you are. And what’s more, I’m so grateful to you for helping the children in your life to know that you’ll do everything you can to keep them safe. And to help them express their feelings in ways that will bring healing in many different neighborhoods. It’s such a good feeling to know that we’re lifelong friends.”</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-mister-rogers-message-of-love-and-kindness-is-good-for-your-health-97970">article</a> that was published June 8, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fred Rogers was not blind to evil, but he still taught love in the face of it. His real neighborhood under attack, his neighbors showed love and forgiveness that can teach and inspire us all.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.