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Biologists and mathematicians at the University of Idaho are knocking at one another’s doors to solve the mysteries
of genetics.
“My background is in mathematics,” said Steve Krone, a mathematics professor. “I got my PhD studying probability. I was working on some mathematical models that were related to some populations … over the years I got more interested in biology, and now I have my own
biology lab.”
Krone is working on a project with biology professor Eva Top that researches antibiotic resistant plasmids in bacteria.
Plasmids are pieces of DNA that are spread from one cell to another like an infection. They can be transmitted across species of bacteria.
“This is one of the main ways that antibiotic resistance is spread and why it is spread so quickly,” Krone said. “I’m working on the theoretical part of it and Eva Top’s working on the experimental part.”
Krone and Top have a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the spread and evolution of these plasmids as part of the Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies, an interdisciplinary association focused on research for evolutionary biology and biomedicine.
It began as a series of lunches between computer scientists, mathematicians and biologists, and developed into an organization for research. In February 2002, the group was given $10.1 million of initial funding bringing together scientists from across disciplines to do research, said Professor of Mathematics Paul Joyce.
“We started looking back at some of these papers from the ‘80s,” Joyce said. “We were trying to see if these theoretical papers could be verified using an experimental system.”
Before the project about plasmids, Krone worked with biologist Dr. Holly Wickman on bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, in response to papers written during the 1980s.
He has also worked with Larry Forney, director of IBEST, and James Foster, who directs the Bioinformatics Core Facility, a supercomputing cluster designed to analyze
scientific data.
In addition to the supercomputer, IBEST runs a DNA sequencing facility that handles genetic research.
“Genetics plays a huge role,” Krone said. “It’s like we have a new window into how all these species are changing over time, but it’s not totally genetics.”
He said a lot of the work he does is both ecology and genetics.
“Different species of bacteria competing for space, that’s ecology,” Krone said. “But randomly arising changes in the genome? That’s genetics.”
IBEST also came at the same time as the graduate Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, which combined studies of mathematics, computer science and biology into an interdisciplinary degree. The program prepares students for a career in research in all three areas.
“The math students are going over to the biology labs for a semester and actually working in the labs,” Joyce said. “The biology students are actually doing some of the mathematical modeling.”
The first graduate of the BCB program was Zaid Abdo, who currently teaches at UI and does research with IBEST. Other students have gone on to tenure track positions at Florida State University and employment at the Center for Mathematical Research in Mexico.
“Right now I’m going to go down to Mexico in March and teach a workshop there,” Joyce said. “I’m recruiting one of his students to the BCB program, so there’s our connection with Latin America.”
Connections are springing up between disciplines and countries, and borders between the sciences are dissolving.
Joyce said the standard paradigm was for chemists to apply to the chemistry unit of the National Science Foundation and biologists to go to the biology department.
“Now, if you’re in biology you can go to math,” he said. “Mathematicians can go to biology. We’re right on the borderline between
different disciplines.”
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