Natural Sexuality

“Alright everybody, quiet down, we’re going to get started,” grumbled Lion. He glared at the menagerie in front of him, squawking and snorting away obliviously. “I SAID QUIET!” he roared. The crowd was silenced and turned wide-eyed to the speaker. “Ahem. Thank you. I’d like to welcome all of you to the second meeting of the Animal Association of Family Values. First off-“

“Wait a second,” piped Bear, “who the heck voted you king of the jungle?”

Tarsier rolled his eyes, which was quite spectacular and frightening to those around him. “Maybe if you weren’t hibernating through our last meeting…”

“Enough, enough,” grumbled Lion. Everything always took ten times longer at inter-species meetings. “Let’s just get down to business, shall we? The topic for today is humans – or Homo sapiens – and their-” he paused to sneer distastefully- “unnatural “heterosexual monogamy” business.”

“Oh come on,” whined Albatross, “are we still going on about that? There are plenty of examples of monogamy across the animal kingdom. 90% of birds are monogamous!”

Bear whispered under his breath, “Only 3% of mammals.”

Albatross huffed. “You mammalists! Really.”

“Oh come on, Albatross,” said Lion. “We all know that’s not entirely true. Only a tiny fraction of birds are actually sexually monogamous. You guys just can’t help getting some on the side. And wasn’t there even a new study that lesbian child rearing pairs are highly prevalent in Albatross?”

“…Maybe,” Albatross blushed, sinking back into the crowd.

“Anyway,” continued Lion, “it has become apparent to the Association that this human deviancy is out of control. It’s simply not natural compared to the mating habits of the rest of the animal kingdom. Well-” he corrected, feeling Albatross’s glare, “it’s not the majority at least. And we all know the most common habits are the best. And even if it is found in other animals, that doesn’t make it right! Look at how quickly they’re out breeding us! The resources they waste on frivolous wedding ceremonies! The anguish they cause themselves feeling like they’re forced to stay with their partner for a lifetime! Why, we’re doing them a favor to point out the error in their ways.”

Bear grumbled. “So what do you suggest we actually do about it?”

Lion stroked his mane proudly. He already saw this question coming. “Well, first we should define what exactly it is we find natural. That way the humans know how to act properly. For example, polygyny is the most common mating system in vertebrates. I have to mate with my many lionesses thousands of times a week, whether they like it or not. Humans? Once a week, maybe if they’re lucky, and with only one female!”

“Woah there,” piped Marmoset. “What about polyandry? Us girls are allowed multiple mates too!”

“Please,” huffed Dwarf Mongoose. “Why are we talking like everyone should get the chance to mate, anyway? Only the dominants should reproduce! I don’t even let my subordinate females ovulate!”

Bonobo grabbed Marmoset and Mongoose in a big hug. “Can’t we all just get along? I mean, we have sex regardless of gender to solve disputes! Doesn’t that sound great?”

Tarsier sneered. “Maybe if you hippies would have watched your cousin a little closer we wouldn’t be having this discussion!”

“Now, now,” muttered Lion, trying to regain order as it looked like Bonobo was about to burst into tears. “Maybe we shouldn’t just focus on mating systems. Like, what’s with all this step parenting business? They should kill all the previous cubs – er, children – when they start a relationship!”

“Ha!” laughed Praying Mantis. “Just kill the children? Why, the women should kill the male! What a good meal they’re missing out on, letting all that meat go to waste. They only need him for his sperm anyway! So illogical.”

Lion frowned nervously. “Well, I don’t know about that-“

“Pshh, why need men at all?” said Whiptail Lizard. “Parthenogenesis works perfectly fine for us!”

Tarsier rolled his eyes again. “Who invited the feminists?”

“Why is it always about females anyway?” piped Seahorse, floating in a small pool for the aquatic animals. The Animal Association of Family Values didn’t discriminate across taxa. “Males should be the ones who give birth! Female birth is just weird.”

“Yeah, but only if they keep their young on their back,” said Giant Water Bug.

“Or in their stomach,” croaked Platypus Frog, burping up a tadpole.

Fig Wasp buzzed excitedly around Lion’s head. “And why do humans have an age of consent? My sons will mate with my daughters before they’re even born!”

“Consent?” Mallard Duck looked around confused. “What’s that? You mean you don’t just go around raping your females?”

Beg Bug giggled excitedly. “I do. I’ll stab my junk through their abdomen if I have to! They call it “traumatic insemination,” but you know they’re just asking for it.”

“Hell, I don’t even care if they’re dead, I’ll still do ’em,” croaked Cane Toad. Many of the animals blanched.

“You’re all nuts!” cried Fungus in the back. “Why do you only have two sexes anyway? Why, some of my cousins have hundreds!”

“What the hell are you doing here, Fungus? You’re not even an animal!” snarled Lion.

“Animalists!” cried Fungus, and slowly oozed away.

“Look,” sighed Lion, exasperated at the animals’ squabbling. “Maybe we should put this off until next month’s meeting, when we’ve had more time to think about it. We can still agree that heterosexual monogamy is unnatural, right?”

“Right!”

“Alright. Let’s just leave it at that for now and move on to our next topic. So our boycott of Papa John’s is going well…”

The Great Grad School Search

In a couple of weeks, I will officially be a senior in college – which means it is time for me to Freak Out.

I’m 99.99% sure I want to go to grad school for my PhD, but that’s about all I know. I’ve been doing research in a lab for the last two and a half years (wow, it’s been that long?) and I absolutely love it. My main problem is that I find so many different things fascinating, that I have a horrible time picking a single topic that I will be focusing on for 3 to 7 years (hopefully closer to 3). If you ask me my interests, I’ll say genetics, evolution, and sex – preferably studying humans, but I’m willing to make exceptions. But if you know much about biology, that doesn’t narrow it down much.

And it seems the way to go about grad school hunting when you’re a go-getting undergrad like myself is to look more at individual professors instead of general programs. It’s not just about going to Harvard or UCLA – these schools are generally great at everything. You want to pick a specific research topic that you love – they’re all wonderful schools for genetics, but only Professor Jones at Suchandsuch University studies the gene regulation of sweat glands in wildebeest. So, this is kind of a problem when you’re like me and you love everything. And of course there isn’t some giant database of every researcher and all of their specific interests. There’s no “What professor should you work with?” Facebook quiz (oh god, thankfully).

Sometimes I wish it was more like recruiting for college sports. I could throw my resume into the mix and professors could try to snatch me up. “3.93 GPA??? Phi Beta Kappa? Publications?? Oh god, work in my lab, I have funding!”

Until the real world turns into my dream world, I guess I’ll just keep searching. Does anyone have grad school hunting tips? What to do or what not to do? Mistakes you made that you wish someone would have warned you about?

Oh no…not another bad book

I think I’ve set up a horrible trend for myself. A biology grad student that I’m friends with gave me this book today, saying I’d probably appreciate the ridiculousness:
Noooooooooooooo, not Ken Ham!!! What do I do? Do I try to ignore it? Do I even bother reading it? Just skimming the book was fairly amusing, in a scary sort of way. It’s full of ridiculous cartoons and illustrations, which makes sense for the target audience…ahem. I actually have good books to read…but the stupidity emanating from my backpack is calling me. Gaaah! At least the Professor and the Dominatrix was just a failed work of fiction, not a book of fiction that people actually believe to be true.

Well? Should I be masochistic again, or hide this book away and forget about it?

A BS in Biology without Evolution

If you are at least vaguely aware of the Evolution/Creationism debate, you know there’s a lot of things wrong with biology education in the United States. You have rallying cries to “teach the controversy” (which doesn’t exist), but thankfully those are being shot down more and more often. There are some students who will never even hear the word “evolution” throughout high school. I know in my high school freshman biology class, which every student had to take, we never mentioned the topic. Once I got to AP Bio my senior year, we covered it well, but that’s only 50 students out of a school of 1400 – and those are the ones who are actually interested in biology, so they have a better chance of accepting evolution anyway! Why aren’t we teaching it when we have the chance to reach everyone?

Well, even when dealing with Biology majors in college, we fail at that.

Now, I’m sure some universities do a great job at teaching evolution to their Bio majors. Obviously since I’ve only attended Purdue, that’s the one example I have – but I’m sure their craptacular methods apply to other universities. It’s especially disappointing since Purdue likes to tout itself as this big Engineering/Science Research I University, yet it can’t even convince all of its Bio majors to accept evolution, not to mention other science programs here.

What’s the problem? The only time evolution is taught in a class required by all Bio sub disciplines is BIOL 121. That’s the introductory class you take the fall of your freshman year, and a whooping four class periods (that’s less than 3.5 hours) are devoted to evolution. While it’s explained well, it’s still so cursory that I knew more about evolution just because I was a nerd and perused Talk Origins in high school.

Other required biology classes will briefly mention evolution, but not in a way that teaches it to a class. You can see some students rolling their eyes when a professor says something like “You can see how this could have evolved.” I’ve had multiple students – some in the very top of the program – tell me that biology courses at Purdue have actually strengthened their faith in God and creationism. They claim that learning all the complexities of biology prove God had to have a hand in it (and then my brain subsequently explodes after hearing “Irreducibly Complex” for the bajillionth time).

Most of the Bio majors allow you to choose the official Evolution class (BIOL 580) as an elective, but that’s only one of your choices out of maybe 20 to 30. And if you don’t accept evolution, how likely are you to take a graduate level class about it? I think the scariest realization pops up when you look at two Bio majors in particular:

Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology:
You think this would be evolution-crazy since, you know, it’s the Evolution degree, right? Well, not so much. You’re required to take 580-Evolution, but that’s all. The only two other evolution related classes are Evolution of Behavior and Sex & Evolution, but you can pick your classes such that you don’t have to take those. They’re just suggestions. They don’t even include any of the human evolution courses offered through anthropology as options for your degree…and past that, I don’t think there are really any other evolution courses at Purdue. I don’t know about you, but it’s a little unnerving that someone can get a degree with “Evolution” in the title after only taking one class.

Biology Education:
This, however, is the scariest of the two. You’d think with all our educational woes we’d desperately try to train a new generation of Biology educators who could properly teach evolution. Well, we don’t. Evolution is one of 47 electives a Bio Ed major can choose, and even though there’s an Education course specifically about teaching Evolution, they’re not required to take it. It’s not even listed as a biology elective – it would just be a general elective if you had any free time (haha, free time! What a ridiculous idea). I would think this is pretty damn important for a future biology teacher to know.

I guess this explains how you can still get rogue creationist teachers who feel that it’s their duty to sabotage teaching evolution with their own beliefs, even when the curriculum is pro-evolution. You can graduate from many places with a degree in Biology and still not even have an elementary grasp of evolution. This is a Serious Problem. All the biologists and scientists who lament about our country’s rejection of evolution need to put the education of Average Joe on hold for a bit and start worrying about students. Professors especially need to speak up. Now, they’re not the blame – the professors who do teach evolution do a great job, and curricula are riddled with bureaucratic bullshit. But they’re our best hope for having some say in the matter. So to any biology professors out there, please fight to ensure all biology majors take at least one comprehensive course in evolution. Even if most of them are bound for med school, we can’t hope to educate the public until we educate our own kind first.

Mmm, nerds

Dilbert explains it all:
Though I have to say, I’m having a horrible track record with all the computer nerds I’ve dated. I hate to propagate the stereotype, but they’ve all had the emotional capacity of a nematode. Next time I’m aiming for a biologist.

Speaking of nerdiness, here are the classes I’m taking next semester:
– Senior Seminar in Genetics (One hour a week of discussing genetics. Woo?)
– Sex & Evolution (I’ve been dying to take this class since I got here, but it’s only offered every other year. I’m psyched! Why do we have sex? Why do (most) species have two sexes? Weeeee!)
– General Physics 2 (Oh god, so close to being done…Sorry for all you physicists, but it’s just not my thing. Now, if it was Elegant Universe kind of theoretical wacky physics, I’d be all in. But I hate doing nothing but math filled with trick questions, bah!)
– Population Genetics (This may be a mistake. I’m taking this as my “fun” elective…yeah, a 500 level graduate course. Oh boy.)
– Senior Biology Labs (Protein Expression and DNA Sequencing. Still waiting to hear back if I can get out of DNA sequencing, since I just spent a summer doing an independent research project where I was sequencing. I’ll be sad if I have to do it all over again.)
– Honors Thesis Research (Still have to pick my topic with my advisor…there are too many ideas floating around now!)

The masochistic part of me still wanted to TA one of the intro biology labs to get some teaching experience before grad school, but looking at my schedule, that may be a bad idea. I guess it really depends if I get out of that one lab or not. I could still TA in the spring, but I’d sort of like to be able to put teaching experience on my resume for when I’m applying. Any thoughts? Other than the fact that I’m a giant nerd?

Mmm, nerds <3

Dilbert explains it all:
Though I have to say, I’m having a horrible track record with all the computer nerds I’ve dated. I hate to propagate the stereotype, but they’ve all had the emotional capacity of a nematode. Next time I’m aiming for a biologist.

Speaking of nerdiness, here are the classes I’m taking next semester:
– Senior Seminar in Genetics (One hour a week of discussing genetics. Woo?)
– Sex & Evolution (I’ve been dying to take this class since I got here, but it’s only offered every other year. I’m psyched! Why do we have sex? Why do (most) species have two sexes? Weeeee!)
– General Physics 2 (Oh god, so close to being done…Sorry for all you physicists, but it’s just not my thing. Now, if it was Elegant Universe kind of theoretical wacky physics, I’d be all in. But I hate doing nothing but math filled with trick questions, bah!)
– Population Genetics (This may be a mistake. I’m taking this as my “fun” elective…yeah, a 500 level graduate course. Oh boy.)
– Senior Biology Labs (Protein Expression and DNA Sequencing. Still waiting to hear back if I can get out of DNA sequencing, since I just spent a summer doing an independent research project where I was sequencing. I’ll be sad if I have to do it all over again.)
– Honors Thesis Research (Still have to pick my topic with my advisor…there are too many ideas floating around now!)

The masochistic part of me still wanted to TA one of the intro biology labs to get some teaching experience before grad school, but looking at my schedule, that may be a bad idea. I guess it really depends if I get out of that one lab or not. I could still TA in the spring, but I’d sort of like to be able to put teaching experience on my resume for when I’m applying. Any thoughts? Other than the fact that I’m a giant nerd?

Sperm Bank Sued for Supplying Bad Sperm

I don’t have any professional training in ethics or law, but I can tell this is sure going to open up a can of worms. A 13 year old girl with Fragile X syndrome, which can lead to varying degrees of learning disability, is suing a sperm bank under product liability law. The sperm she was conceived with, which her mother bought from the bank in question, carried the genetic disorder (genetically, it’s fairly easy to show it didn’t come from mom).

“Donovan does not have to show that Idant was negligent, only that the sperm it provided was unsafe and caused injury. “It doesn’t matter how much care was taken,” says Daniel Thistle, the lawyer representing Donovan, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

According to Wikipedia (which we know is infallible), sperm donors may be subjected to various levels of genetic testing. Does anyone know if there are laws requiring them to test for certain disorders? I’d imagine some would be a good idea to test for, especially if they’re dominantly inherited and late-onset like Huntington’s*. Most recessive alleles are rare enough that there’s not as much reason to test – that is, the odds of two random people carrying the same allele is incredibly low. At first glance you may think it’s a good idea to hold sperm banks responsible for testing. I mean, you’re selling a product, and you don’t want to give someone a horrible disease, right?

Well, things aren’t as simple as they seem. No two sperm are identical, and errors do occur. A single point mutation that occurs at extremely high rates is the cause of the most common form of dwarfism. A one in a million occurrence isn’t going to show up in any sort of genetic testing you may do on a semen sample. The same holds true for any sort of disorder that results from aberrant chromosome number (Down Syndrome, Klinefelter’s Syndrome, etc).

Even family history can’t always alert us to a problem. This girl’s situation is the perfect example. Fragile-X is a dominant X-linked disorder, so you should be able to see it in males, right? Well, not exactly. Fragile-X is caused by having too many trinucleotide repeats, much like Huntington’s. Trinucleotide repeats like to do this thing called genetic anticipation, where in every generation they expand and make more and more copies. So while daddy’s repeat number (and all of his family members’) may be in the “normal” range, after expansion, there may be enough repeats to cause the syndrome. The number can also vary from sperm to sperm, so there’s no good way to test this.

So you can see why if she wins, this is going to set a scary precedent. Sperm banks can screen like crazy, but there’s always the possibility of getting some bad sperm. It’s ridiculous to think you can sue them because something turns out wrong. Anyone who’s ever reproduced is taking that same risk. In fact, it’s probably lower because most people don’t do genetic screening unless there’s reason to be afraid. Sperm bank sperm is probably a safer bet than your man. So, should you be able to sue your spouse for providing bad genetic material? I certainly don’t think so, but who knows…maybe the ensuing paranoia over reproducing would help fight our overpopulation problem.

Let’s hope the judge on this case has some basic understanding of genetics.

*Of course, then you get into the whole ethical debate about whether or not to notify the donor or his children if he does have Huntington’s…but that’s a whole other issue.

Evolution 09, here I come!

I just found out that I was accepted for the Undergraduate Diversity Program for the Evolution 2009 conference. Woohoo! They’re going to cover my registration fees/travel costs/etc so I can attend and present my poster, along with 14 other individuals. This is a pretty big conference (and I’m a huge evolution nerd), so I’m really excited! Hopefully this helps me figure out what I want to do for grad school, since that’s approaching quickly.

Though I sort of wonder what “diversity” aspect got me in. Is it because I’m female, or because I’m an atheist? Not too sure if “atheist” is in the minority at an evolution conference, ha. Well, I do participate in a lot of diversity-related clubs and stuff, so I’m going to tell myself it was the whole package.

Idaho*, here I come!

*Seriously, first Nebraska, and now Idaho? I’m not quite sure how you biologists pick your conference locations.

Repetitive Learning

Today I walked into my upper-level Eukaryotic Genetics class and saw we were going to be studying Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the bajillionth time. One of my biggest pet peeves as a biology undergraduate is learning the same stuff over and over again. I understand there’s some need for review – sometimes you didn’t learn it well the first time, or maybe you’re just rusty and need a refresher. But eventually it becomes a tad bit ridiculous. If you’re a junior or senior Genetics major (aka, people in this class), I would hope you’d have the basics pretty fucking down by now. Let’s see the running total on how many classes have had me review these concepts for far:

Basics on DNA:
Pre-College: 5
College: 13

Mitosis and Meiosis:
Pre-College: 5
College: 10

Mendelian genetics:
Pre-College: 4
College: 7

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium:
Pre-College: 2
College: 9

Even if you came from the worst high school ever, you should have been taking the college classes. Granted, I’ve taken some electives that go towards these totals…but at least 4-6 of those classes are mandatory for biology majors. The sad thing? Some people are still confused or lost about these topics. Really? I mean, I understand needing help with three-factor crosses, or elaborate signaling cascades or something…those can be confusing even if you’ve heard it once before. But it’s beyond me how you can get to your final years in a biology program and still not understand the fundamentals. How the hell have you made it this far?

If you’re a upperclassman undergraduate and don’t know what’s wrong with this picture, plz drop out of biology now kthx

We spend so much time reviewing concepts we should have mastered already that I hardly feel like I’m learning anything new from my classes. Most of my intellectual growth has come from working in a laboratory for the past two years, or reading up on science at my own leisure. We’ve yet to cover a new topic in Eukaryotic Genetics, and there are only four weeks of class left. I want to say that I absolutely love the vast majority of my biology Professors, including the one for Eukaryotic Genetics. I don’t blame them for the review, because it seems like so many people need it. The problem is our educational system is catering to the people who are lagging behind, and they end up dragging everyone down with them. I guess I was spoiled being in honors/accelerated programs in high school, but I wish there was some sort equivalent for biology courses here.

This also leads to the scary realization of how low the requirements are in order to get your degree. While I’m at the top of my class, I still feel like there is so much about genetics and evolution that I don’t know yet. I still read journal articles with some difficulty because I’ve never been taught most of the concepts they talk about. In fact, to be a Genetics major you only need to take ONE upper level genetics class, in addition to your “core” introductory biology courses. Same for the Evolution degree – just take the one upper level evolution class, and you’re done. You have to take other upper level biology classes as electives from a list, but you can pick some that aren’t directly relevant.

I realize this post may come off as pretentious/whiney, but I can’t help but be annoyed. It just scares me that I, along with my classmates, will be considered qualified in our field when we’ve learned so little. What’s even scarier is that while I recognize how much more there is to learn and I want to go to graduate school, there are people who still don’t understand punnett squares and they want to become doctors. Yikes. Let’s just hope there’s a difference between “want to become” and “will become.”

Is this a biology specific problem, or do other majors experience this?