Science as Social Enterprise

Rosenberg E, Koren O, Reshef L, Efrony R, Zilber-Rosenberg I.

Nat Rev Microbiol. 2007 May;5(5):355-62. Epub 2007 Mar 26. Review.PMID: 17384666 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

Email thread:

from: Eugene Rosenberg <eros@post.tau.ac.il>

to: Richard Jefferson <raj@cambia.org>

date: Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 7:25 PM

subject: Re: Hologenome theory, microbiome / holobiont

Dear Richard,

Wow. What a joy to read your e-mail and blog. Before commenting, let me inform you that I am a young 75 year old general microbiologist that has published 250 scientific articles, almost exclusively on experimental studies on myxobacteria, hydrocarbon degradation by bacteria and more recently bacterial diseases of corals. My wife, Ilana, is the best nutritionist in Israel, with a strong background in biochemistry and microbiology. We came to the concept of the hologenome (I now include you in the “we”) from am attempt to explain how a particular coral became resistant to bacterial bleaching. Clearly, we share your view of the holobiont as a unit of selection in evolution of animals and plants.

Where do we go from here? Your clear discription of the glucuronide conjugate system is a fine example of how the microbes are an integral part of host metabolism. Furthermore you speculate that these reactions can lead to mating selection. Now to blow your mind- We have been working on the role of bacteria in mating selection for the last two years. It started when my wife found a paper in Evolution, published 20 years ago by Diane Dodd. She took a population of Drosophila from Bruce Canyon and raised half of them on a starch diet and the other half on maltose. After a year, she mixed them, and found the “starch flies” perfered to mate with “starch flies” and “maltose flies” perfered to mate with “maltose flies.” Although they offered no explaination for this mating selection, my wife and I immediately thought bacteria. So, I put a graduate student, Gil Sharon, on the problem. He first repeated Dodd’s experiment using the standard laboratory strain of D. malanogaster and sucrose instead of maltose. Mating selection occurred after two generations and was maintained for 30 generations. When we added antibiotics, mating selection was abolished, indicating bacteria were responsible. Furthermore, we infected the antibiotic-treated flies with their homologous bacteria (isolated prior to antibiotic treatment) and mating selection was reestablished. We sent a manuscript to Nature and they rejected it, saying they would reconsider if we identified the specific bacterium responsible for the mating selection. This has not been an easy task, but we are still working on it.

Regardless of the particular bacterium, what is the mechanism? We have been extracting flies with pentane and doing GC-MS. There are differences between the “starch flies” and the “sucrose flies”.

Maybe the glucuronide system is involved.

It was a pleasure to hear from you. Let’s keep in contact.

Shalom

Eugene

Eugene Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus
Dept. of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology
Tel Aviv University
eros@post.tau.ac.il
+972-3-6409838

—– Original Message —–

From: Richard Jefferson

To: eros@post.tau.ac.il

Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 8:27 AM

Subject: Hologenome theory, microbiome / holobiont relationships etc

Dear Professor Rosenberg,

I am writing firstly to compliment you and Professor Zilber-Rosenberg on your clear, lucid and compelling writing in the last years on the hologenome theory.

I have read these with great interest and pleasure.  I particularly commend you for the fine exposition in the FEMS and the Environmental Microbiology review and opinion piece, respectively.

I am a molecular biologist, and now as well innovation system strategist, currently with funding from the Gates Foundation.    I started work in molecular biology in 1974, and in the late 70’s and subsequently I began working with the glucuronide metabolism pathways of commensal vertebrate microbes, including E. coli.   It became very clear to me fairly early that the suite of capabilities to import, metabolize and ‘share’ the products of xenobiotic and endobiotic metabolism by gut microbes was central to the selective performance of the host and microbiome – the holobiont.

As I became involved in the earliest days of agricultural biotechnology, my focus on systems-level understanding and intervention continued to be informed by this awareness.   I was convinced that the model system approaches which were and are so joyously productive, may not have been as joyously instructive as to the workings and logic of natural systems as embedded through natural (or in agriculture, human) selection.

I’ve written about this approach a little, but I’m not very prolific as a writer (I would make a terrible academic, alas).  I have however been speaking and promoting this work for many years as part of my work as founder of Cambia – an international non-profit institution.

I attach to this a link to my blog (rarely visited, rarely updated) in which I wrote down some of my thoughts.  ( http://blogs.cambia.org/raj/index.php/2007/09/06/the-hologenome-hologenomics/ ).  I also have in my blog (the top of the blog) links to videos of lectures I”ve given at Cold Spring Harbor in 1994 on the hologenome, and its implications; and presentations in South Africa in 1997 (I’d love to share with you my old powerpoint if you’re interested) in which I refer to our molecular work on glucuronide metabolism and the logic of applying eco-therapeutics and the understanding and adjustment of the hologenome to health challenges.     Term ‘hologenome’ and ‘holobiont’ and its critical role in evolution were proposed by me at that CSH lecture and since, and I was overjoyed to read your parallel and independent articulation of their importance, especially with regard to the critical horizontal inheritance opportunities for the fitness of the selected holobiont in a complex environment.

This has continued to be my intellectual focus for much of the last 30 years, but most of my work has been focused on democratizing science-enabled innovation through ‘open source’ type approaches, and through increasing the transparency and fairness of intellectual property systems.

I would be thrilled to be in correspondence with you about these ideas – they shape my thinking in many fields, and I’m musing very hard about setting up experimental systems to test the hologenome theory, which to me is compelling.  My laboratory has been in storage now for over a year since our institute moved from Canberra to Brisbane, but within a year I expect I may be back to full steam.  I’ll likely be doing a ‘sabbatic’ of sorts at Berkeley  from July – December and look forward to getting back into the game, as our Initiative for Open Innovation goes to scale and can be taken over by other champions.

Again, my warmest wishes and congratulations for some of the best science writing I’ve read in a long time.  That we have arrived at virtually identical conclusions from such different perspectives is itself most gratifying.

Best wishes

Richard

Richard A. Jefferson PhD
Chief Executive Officer, Cambia
Director, Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI)
Professor of Science, Technology & Law
Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
G301, 2 George St, Brisbane 4000, QLD Australia
+61 419 499 753 (mobile)  +61 7 3138 4419 (work) +61 7 3138 4405 (fax)
www.bios.net |  www.cambia.org |  www.patentlens.net  | www.openinnovation.org
e: r.jefferson@cambia.org