Inaugural lecture | The moral evolution of Mankind

The rise of moral behaviour and moral codes among hominids has received much attention by animal psychologists, ethologists and primatologists. By contrast, we know much less about evolutionary patterns in moral behaviour from the moment mankind developed complex cultural systems. Anthropological and sociological theory have put forward some interesting hypotheses about the possibility of an evolutionary pattern in the moral history of mankind, though wide cultural disparities often undermine attempts to achieve a convincing overall view of such process. The early social scientists—Adam Smith, Comte, Marx, Spencer—were not averse to develop such general theories. With the considerable progress made since by the social sciences, we are now in a better position to draw up some very cautious generalizations about a shared moral evolution, and even about the possibility of moral progress. The attempt to discern a common pattern in human moral development under the aegis of most complex civilizations—from the Neolithic till today—may help us to discover common traits in the ethical and moral development in some of them—from China to Egypt, from India to Greece. The question also arises: are complex civilizations the only possible frameworks for the growth of universalistic moral systems, including Buddhism and Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as lay and secular conceptions, such as those generated during the Enlightenment in the West? Perhaps a close look at this may help us to build a convincing evolutionary theory of human morality and to better understand the nature of democracy, the scientific ethos, and human and civil rights today.

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The Anthropocene

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the Earth has undergone unprecedented changes. But in the last few decades there has been a rapid acceleration of humanity’s impact on our environment, driven by a world population that now exceeds 7 billion people. Humanity’s impact can been seen in even the remotest parts of the planet, exceeding the natural limits within which life on Earth has evolved over the past few million years, at least. The exploitation of natural resources and the unregulated disposal of waste products into the “global commons”—our oceans and atmosphere—poses serious challenges for the future. We must adopt solutions that lead to a more sustainable future, while raising the standard of living of those who are impoverished and increasingly vulnerable to environmental instability. This requires foresight and leadership at an international level, qualities that are sadly lacking in the political leaders of today.

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The future of Mankind

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Microbiology for the 21st century

Pathogenic microorganisms do not exist in a vacuum, but rather require appropriate environmental conditions, presence of intermediate hosts or vectors, and, for human pathogens, appropriate social and economic factors that allow for infection. Thus, study of pathogenicity requires interdisciplinary understanding, gleaned from microbiology, epidemiology, protozoology, entomology, ornithology, ecology, hydrology, climatology, ocean sciences, and genetics, to name a few disciplines that are relevant. The web of connections of all these fields, and more, can be defined as biocomplexity. Cholera transmission depends on the causative bacterium, Vibrio cholerae, the zooplankter, namely the copepod, that serves as its aquatic host, and environmental factors that affect the host populations, including water temperature, tides, and salinity. More recently, the application of genomics to the understanding of microbial ecology has proven valuable, notably for understanding the epidemics and pandemics caused by Vibrio cholerae. More than 100 isolates of Vibrio cholerae and related Vibrio spp. have been sequenced and their genome sequences analyzed to determine pathogenic properties, lateral gene transfer, and their evolution. The most recent data for Vibrio cholerae isolates from the Haitian cholera epidemic will be presented and ecological information linked to the epidemic will be provided.

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Cooperate to compete

For many years, the probability to achieve success, both in biology and in the business environment, was measured primarily by the ability to compete with other organisms and with other companies. Lynn Margulis, fighting against an established scientific consensus, worked for decades to demonstrate that cooperation of small units with common goals provided organisms with the strength to compete, survive and thrive. In the new economy, and particularly among knowledge-based companies, the ability to cooperate has proven to be one of the virtues needed to be competitive. Cooperation between small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with larger companies is a process that seems designed according to Margulis’s endosymbiotic theory. Asebio has helped strengthening this networks of cooperation that are at the foundations of many succesfull integrations in wich small and very innovative companies merge with bigger ones without losing their capabilities. As in nature, this allows both organizations to benefit and strengthen each other with few tradeoffs. In an economic environment as ours this combination of qualities will be essential to continue to resist and adapt to the current economic situation.

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Evolution and symbiosis

Although it is true that the role of endosymbiosis in the origin of eukaryotic cells had been discussed since the end of the 19th century, these proposals, which where largely speculative, were part of non Darwinian explanations typical of the early 20th century. What Lynn Margulis provided from 1967 onwards was a testable hypothesis with specific predictions in a broad range of fields. Indeed, in her first book (1970) she addresses not only prokaryotic evolution and the origin of nucleated cells, but also the deep interaction between the biosphere and the planet itself. While others were looking towards the inside of cells and their molecules, she decided to take a broader perspective, both in time and space. Endosymbiosis is not a Lamarckian mode of evolution. It represents a different form of genetic variation, i.e., like conjugation and meiotic sex followed by fertilization, it is a combinatorial mode of evolutionary change. Equally significant, the biological traits of symbionts have a previous evolutionary history that has been shaped by the sieve of natural selection, and the symbiotic acquisition of genes and genomes is random, i.e., it is independent of the advantage it may confer on the organisms in their specific environment.

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Chromosomes of Protists: the crucible of evolution

As early as 1925, the great protozoologist Edouard Chatton classified microorganisms into two categories, the prokayotic and the eukaryotic microbes, according to the only observation of their nuclear organization by means of light microscopy. Now, by means of TEM, we know that prokaryotic microbes are characterized by the absence of nuclear envelope surrounding the bacterial chromosome, which is more or less condensed and whose chromatin is deprived of histone proteins but presents specific basic proteins. Eukayotic microbes, the Protists, have nucleus surrounded by nuclear envelope and chromosomes more or less condensed whose chromatin are provided with classical histone proteins organized into nucleosomes. The extraordinary diversity of the mitotic systems presented by the 36 phyla of Protists (according to Margulis et al, 1990, Handbook of Protoctista) is in opposition with the relative homogeneity of their chromosome structure and chromatin components, except for the Mesokaryotes Mesokaryotes comprise essentially the 4,000 species of Dinoflagellates, in which the original features presented by their nucleus (dinokaryon), their dinomitosis and chromosome organization as well as their chromatin composition, question us. Although their DNA synthesis is typically eukaryotic, Dinoflagellates are the only eukaryotes in which the chromatin, organized into quasi permanently condensed chromosomes, is totally devoid of histones and nucleosomes. It contains specific DNA-binding basic proteins and the permanent compaction of their chromosomes during the whole cell cycle puts the question of modalities of their division and transcription. Since the genesis of the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA), Protists have ceaselessly colonized every biotope on our planet. They have left fossil traces (i.e. dinosteranes in the early Cambrian stratus, and petroleum layers) as well as current (planktonic food chains, Ciliates in the ruminant paunch, HyperMastigines in the Termite digestive gut, parasite protists in human, etc.). All these microorganisms form a “gigantic Protist planet” whose phylogenetic tree, via genome and chromosome studies, is far from being achieved.

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Life in extreme Earth, and beyond

One of the fundamental questions in biology is to know the limits of life. The exploration of extreme environments has allowed the discovery of habitats that were considered non habitable only a few years ago. As a consequence, the interest in deciphering the diversity and microbial ecology of extreme environments has grown exponentially, not only to gain information on these peculiar ecosystems but also to explore the potential applications of the microorganisms developing on them. Extremophiles have also a fundamental role in the development of Astrobiology. According to the NASA Astrobiology Institute road map (http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov), one of the main objectives of this area of transdisciplinary research is the characterization of extreme environments, the microorganisms that thrive on them and the mechanisms that allow them to develop in these conditions. The study of extremophiles has expanded the possibility to find life elsewhere in the Universe. Of the different extreme environments, special attention should be given to the extreme acidic environments associated to mining activities. In this case we are not dealing with adaptations to extreme geophysical conditions (such as temperature, radiation, low water activity, and pressure) but to the extreme acidic conditions generated by the chemolithotrophic metabolism of microorganisms capable to obtain energy from metallic sulfides, mainly pyrite. The exploration of the subsurface geomicrobiology of the Iberian Pyrite Belt has allowed a better understanding of the dynamics of these chemolithotrophic systems, which are independent of the radiation and responsible for the generation of natural acidic conditions of astrobiological interest. This is the case of Río Tinto, one of the best known Mars geochemical terrestrial analogues. Subsurface microbial life needs, for its successful development, efficient symbiotic relationships between the different microbial components of the systems.

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Small is beautiful. Keeping the spirit of Academia

The opportunity for a single principal investigator to maintain a small laboratory group of undergraduate and graduate students conducting original research in an academic setting has changed significantly over the last twenty-four years. This is the 150^th anniversary of the Morrill Act that founded the Land Grant Colleges in the United States. It was a great experiment in higher education and by many measures it was highly successful. However today there is significant questioning of the public value of public higher education and particularly public research universities. Politically there is an increased emphasis place on the controlling the portion of the cost of higher education that is placed on students and their parents. This has led to a debate about the role of research in undergraduate education. In addition to their educational mission, universities are responsible for near one third of the basic and applied research in the U.S. and are specifically responsible for more than fifty percent of the basic research in the country. The financial model that has supported the major public research universities is eroding. Federal non-defense R&D funding has been flat since 1992. State support for public higher education is declining rapidly. Endowments at most institutions have dwindled significantly since the global recession of 2008.  The capacity of families to absorb further tuition and fee increases has been surpassed. Industrial support of public research universities (focused on both work force development and innovation) has been cyclical. Since Bayh/Dole in 1980, and with increasing emphasis over the past several years, universities have turned toward reaping the financial benefits of their innovation through patents, licensing and direct entrepreneurial activity. Public universities are turning to a combination of increasing enrollments, cost cutting measures, eficiencies in resource utilization, and new models of teaching delivery (e.g. massive, open online courses). What remains uncertain is whether a new model for public higher education will emerge and if it does what form it will take.

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Natural History Museums: producing, conserving and disseminating science

The Natural History Museum of Barcelona was created at the end of the 19th century as Barcelona’s first public museum. It is currently distributed in different venues located in three strategic areas of the city. The new permanent exhibit of the Museum, “Planeta Vida” (Planet Life), is located in the newest one: the Museu Blau (Blue Museum). The Museum’s mission is to generate and share knowledge with the aim of creating a society that is better informed, more connected and more responsible towards nature. It does this by maintaining collections that are the tangible witnesses of the natural heritage of Catalonia, doing research on biological and geological diversity, and creating experiences that encourage as many people as possible to explore, learn, love, enjoy, enter the dialogue and participate. The Earth, as we know it today, is the result of a process of interactions with the physical and chemical environment of the planet and its living beings. The rivers, the mountains, the lakes and the oceans are intimately linked to the organisms that live there, and together, they make up a global ecosystem that regulates the conditions of the planet. This joint vision of the Earth and life, which integrates all the disciplines of the natural sciences, held by Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, is the backbone of the Planeta Vida exhibit, which displays the most advanced scientific knowledge on this subject. This is explained through the collections of the museum and using state-of-the-art technological resources. Visitors learn through the interactive screens and the audiovisual materials that are found throughout the exhibit. Planeta Vida is structured around three major concepts—Biography of the Earth, The Earth Today, and Islands of Science—and constitutes a space for exploring, discovering and getting excited by the phenomena of nature. Planeta Vida offers a journey through the milestones of the joint evolution of the Earth and life, including geological and biological phenomena and showing the fascinating diversity of nature.

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The public understanding of science: the Möbius strip of knowledge

The Möbius strip has apparently two faces. A close examination, however, reveales that the strip is a surface with one only side. The same happens with science communication. Apparently, it comprises two major categories: communication to colleagues by means of articles published in scientific journals, and communication to general audiences—what has been called ‘popularisation of science’. Nevertheless, such a duality does not exist. Differences lay only in the format, but not in the content. Scientific journals started as a means of communicating science to the citizenship, who was more and more interested in science. In contrast with modern journals, they did not usually contain descriptions of experiments. Galileo also approached non-scientific audiences when he described his theories in Italian instead of Latin. Nowadays there is also another apparent dichotomy about science communication: who should communicate science to general audiences?, scientists or journalists and science writers? Debating this has no sense because not all scientists are able to communicate nor have all journalists the ability to grasp scientific concepts and disseminate scientific knowledge. And the opposite is also right. There is a tradition, however, of  scientists that have been brilliant communicators. Among them, let us mention Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, and Lynn Margulis.

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Lynn Margulis published mainly in well-known journals, so the Web of Science (WOS) search is complete as far as we could determine. Both the Science Citation Index (SCI) and WOS permit to find the papers published over the past century. Here we will discuss her approximately 300 papers and books as well as that much larger journal literature (5600 papers) in which her work has been cited. The former is first mainly identified in the WOS Source Index. The latter is identified in the main section of WOS called the citation index or cited references index. For each paper listed in the Source Index one finds the traditional bibliographic citation. However, unlike traditional bibliographies, each WOS entry contains the complete list of books or journal articles cited by the authors. This list of cited references is essential to the creation of the Historiographs which are the main theme of this presentation. For the past few years the WOS has increased by the addition of a software package called HistCite. This software is available free of charge to any user of the WOS. HistCite was originally created by us (E.Garfield , A.I. Pudovkin and V.S. Istomin). Having found the approximately 250 papers published by Margulis, the collection of bibliographic citations is downloaded to HistCite. Many of non-WOS publications are found in the literature cited by Margulis or other authors. The second and perhaps most important part of this work is to find the collection of papers citing Margulis’ work. We performed a “Citation Search” in WOS, and exported the WOS entries for these citing papers, including all the references cited in each paper. To this much larger collection of 5600 citing papers we added the first collection of Margulis’ own publications. Thus, we have two collections: 1) Publications by Margulis, 259 papers; we call it the 1st collection; 2) Margulis & the citing papers, 5593 papers; we refer to it as the 2nd collection. The ability to identify the most locally cited (or locally citing) papers is a unique feature of HistCite, not available in WOS.

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Cellular symbiosis and metabolic evolution

The theory of symbiogenesis, proposed by Boris Kozo-Polyansky Mikhaylovich (1890-1957) and deployed in all its explanatory power by Lynn Margulis (1938-2011), allows the study of the emergence of new structures, metabolisms and behaviours from the association of different species. Actually there is an ancient connection between endosymbiosis and metabolic evolution in eukaryotes since associations with prokaryotic microorganisms have been present and recurrent throughout their evolutionary history. One of the best studied cases are the metabolic symbiogenesis between insects and bacteria, which have occurred independently many times during the last 300 million years, producing numerous mergers of the branches of the tree of life. A conspicuous outcome of symbiogenesis is that all eukaryotes are really metabolic mosaics.

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Symbiotic planet: from the Cosmos to microcosmos

Throughout evolution, microorganisms have been responsible for the maintainance of the biosphere. However, only rarely the microorganisms responsible for key processes have been identified, despite the crucial role that they play in the cycling of nutrients, Obstacles that have traditionally hampered fundamental microbial ecology inquiries are now yielding technical advancements. All current information about prokaryotes is based on measurements done on less than 5000 isolated species, which represent ca. 0.1 % of the total estimated diversity of prokaryotes in the biosphere. The Earth’s habitats have complex gradients of environmental conditions that include extreme variations in temperature, light, pH, pressure, salinity and both inorganic and organic compounds. Each geochemical setting features its own panoply of resources that can be physiologically exploited by microorganisms. Although very small (10–7 to 10–6 m), they are abundant (1030 to 1032 individuals globally, including viruses). Their phylogenetic and physiological diversity is considerably higher than that of animals and plants, and their interactions with other life forms are correspondingly more complex. Microbes interact with the other forms of life (their descendants) in many ways, from planetary to cellular scale. On a planetary scale, microbes regulate essential processes in both continents and oceans. Over geological time the ocean has evolved from being an anaerobic incubator of early cellular life into a solar-powered emitter of molecular oxygen, a transformation that has been punctuated by catastrophic extinctions followed by the iterative re-emergence of bio­logical diversity. Today, the ocean is becoming substan­tially warmer, more acidic and with a clear expansion of oxygen-starved regions. Theses changes have altered the cycling of trace gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, which are very significant for the global metabolism and can affect the climate change. On a cellular scale, microbes live on and inside (both peri- and intra-cellularly) all other organisms, affecting their metabolisms and fitness. Not any single species can evolve without the concomitant evolution of its accompanying microbes. Evolution is an integrative process in which organisms, populations and whole ecosystems adaptatively change following environmental modifications according to the constrictions of natural selection.

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