BYU NewsNet - Sharing fame with an insect

One of the world's top science journals published a paper co-authored by a BYU undergraduate. This feat is rarely achieved by professors let alone undergraduate students. The paper, written by BYU assistant professor of integrated biology, Michael Whiting and Taylor Maxwell, a BYU undergraduate now working on his doctorate in St. Louis, will be featured on the cover of the Jan. 15 issue of the journal Nature. The article they wrote will change the way scientists look at evolution.

By analyzing the DNA sequences of the walking stick, Maxwell and Whiting found that members of a certain group of these insects lost the ability to fly and then re-evolved it 50 million years later.

"What this does is provide a new perspective in which to view evolution," Whiting said. "We thought for evolution it was either use it or lose it."

Scientists had always thought that once an organism had lost a complex feature, it could not gain it back. The DNA of the walking sticks Maxwell and Whiting studied showed that while the common ancestor to the walking stick had wings, the original walking sticks did not. However, today there are walking sticks with and without wings.

"This is the equivalent of finding whales walking around on legs," Whiting said, because whales once had legs. To people who study bugs, it has the same level of surprise.

The project, which took two and a half years, began when Whiting received a grant from the National Science Foundation to construct the family tree of that insect class. Maxwell, who had an Office of Research and Creative Activities scholarship, sequenced the DNA and put together preliminary results.

BYU's Fulton Supercomputing Facility was used to discover the relationships among the insects.

Keith Crandall, an associate professor of integrated biology, said the findings were possible because of BYU's excellent evolutionary biology program and its facilities.

The DNA sequences of these little bugs will change the way science will look at evolution, and the bugs' appearance won them a spot on the cover.

"We're fortunate because of the story, and we had a picture of a sexy little bug," Maxwell said. "One reason we're on the cover is because we had pictures of lots of sexy little bugs."

Maxwell was only an undergraduate research assistant who wanted to go to medical school when the project started. He is now receiving international recognition.

"Almost everything that gets sent to Science or Nature is rejected," Maxwell said. "It's a big deal. Actually, it's a really big deal."

"Most researchers will go their entire career without being published in Nature," Whiting said, "You're competing against everybody in the world in any field. They (the top journals, Science and Nature) both have the highest rejection rates."

It has been seven years since a BYU professor has had an article published in Nature.

The success of the article demonstrates that undergraduate research gives students at BYU an experience to get into graduate school and shows BYU is gaining a reputation as a place for recruiting, Whiting said.

Maxwell, now a doctoral student at Washington University, was accepted to every graduate school he applied to and earned a National Science Foundation Fellowship, which virtually pays for all of his graduate school.

"The stuff I did at BYU with the evolutionary principles directly associates with what I'm doing right now with cancer and heart disease," Maxwell said. " I was able to get into every place I applied to, directly because of the people I worked with and the experience they were able to give me."

Whiting said, "Undergraduate research, if it's properly supervised, can be very significant."

Crandall put the significance of the findings into perspective, "We've been advised by the leaders of this church to gain knowledge and truth. We don't get knowledge and truth to gain a job or economic success. That's what basic research is about -it's simply to learn and know. That's what makes it fun."