Erich Jarvis Talks and Meeting

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Dr. Erich Jarvis of the Rockefeller University will be speaking in the UMass College of Natural Sciences Distinguished Scientist and Engineer Series on October 19, 2020. Please indicate which of these remote events you would like to attend. You will receive a link later.

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Erich Jarvis, Rockefeller University

10:00 Talk: "Surviving and thriving as an under-represented minority scientist in a majority environment"

I grew up as a person of color in the United States of America, faced with challenges that many had as members of an underrepresented minority group. Her I will present some of the lessons I have learned that have allowed me to survive as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment. I believe the science we conduct and discoveries we make are influenced by our cultural experience, whether they be positive, negative, or neutral. This has happened to me, and the people I have worked with. I will present examples from molecular biology, to neuroscience, to genomics. I believe that the negative aspects of these influences will be helped by genomics showing how related and integrated all humans are to each other.
Associated reading: Jarvis, E.D. Surviving as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment. Molecular Biology of Cell. (2015) Vol 26, 3679-3891.

4:00 Talk: "Evolution of brain pathways for vocal learning and speech"

Vocal learning is the most critical behavior for spoken language. It has evolved multiple independent times among mammals and birds. Remarkably, although all vocal learning species are distantly related and have closer relatives that are non-vocal learners, humans and the vocal learning birds have evolved convergent forebrain pathways that control vocal learning. We used comparative genomics and transcriptomics to discover convergent changes in multiple genes in song learning pathways in birds and speech pathways in humans. The vocal learning brain pathways have convergent specialized changes in genes that control connectivity, neuroprotection, and synaptic plasticity. We have found that specialized regulation is associated with convergent accelerated regions in the genomes of these species, which in turn have differential epigenetic availability in enhancer regions of some of the genes, inside the neurons of the vocal learning brain regions. To explain these findings, we propose a motor theory of vocal learning origin, in which brain pathways for vocal learning evolved by brain pathway duplication of an ancestral motor learning pathway, using mostly the same genes, but with some divergences in gene regulation via sequence and epigenetic changes, that control divergent connectivity and other functions

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Would you like to attend the 10:00 talk, "Surviving and thriving as an under-represented minority scientist in a majority environment"? *

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Would you like to attend the 4:00 talk, "Evolution of brain pathways for vocal learning and speech"? *

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Would you like to attend the 11:30 - 12:30 discussion? (limited to students and postdocs) *

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