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My time with Eric Davidson
Developmental Biology ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Developmental Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/developmentalbiology
Editorial
My time with Eric Davidson
I first encountered Eric Davidson in 1969 when, as a graduate student in the MBL Embryology Course, I heard him lecture. He spoke in general about the role of the nucleus in development. I now realize he organized his lecture on the basis of the introduction to his 1968 book, Gene Activity in Early Development and included some of the ideas published in his 1969 Science paper written with Roy Britten. That paper presented ideas that he built on throughout his career. In my naïve view, it seemed like Eric was belaboring an established tenet. Did not everyone accept that DNA in the nucleus was the genetic material and the blueprint for development? But it was not until much later in my education that I realized he was reacting to ongoing controversies occupying the last 16 years since the publication of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. To emphasize that controversy I remember that Lionel Jaffe, who studied the role of calcium waves in many kinds of biological processes including development, several times during the lecture refuted Eric's focus on the nucleus. I met Eric often over the ensuing summers at MBL since my major professor had leased a summer laboratory there. Eric taught in the Embryology Course and began to direct it in 1972. At this time, he re-organized the course. It was shortened to 6 weeks and ran about 12 h a day beginning with lectures at 10:00 a.m. and ending with laboratory periods in the evening. This was drastic change much discussed by the old-timers who had weathered leaking ceilings in the old wooden lab buildings. But the intensity was intentional. Eric believed that the excitement of the laboratory could compete with the vacation digressions of Cape Cod. His approach proved correct based on student responses and the several published reports that were largely executed during the course. However, trips to the Woods Hole bar, the Captain Kidd, continued to follow the evening sessions In 1984 while I was at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, I took advantage of an NSF program to train PIs in molecular biology and asked Eric if I could join his laboratory for 6 months to undertake that training. He answered affirmatively saying: “we could use a larval biologist”. Soon after I arrived in 1985, I presented a seminar to the Davidson laboratory group which numbered about 30 people then. I talked about early cell lineage and presented hypotheses to account for how embryonic cell lineages could contribute to adult structures in a creature with a long larval phase in which rudiments of the adult developed. Eric was
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2016.01.022 0012-1606/& 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
unusually rapt and afterward he invited me to his office for a discussion. In the following weeks we met a couple of times each week and loudly discussed the possible connections between embryonic and adult tissues through the little understood larval phase. It was loud and fun because little was known about later cell lineages and we could each try to convince the other of our poorly supported views. The discussions resulted in a lineage map published with Eric's third edition of Gene Activity in Early Development. They also served as the basis for cell lineage studies that occupied my time for the next few years. This process was so entertaining that I resigned my position at the University of Puerto Rico and joined the Davidson laboratory. In the late 1980's Eric again accepted the directorship of the Embryology Course. He invited me to present the laboratories on sea urchins and teach the students how to inject DNA or lineage tracer into embryos. I also conducted evening demonstration laboratories at Eric's urging. These were demonstrations of the classical systems of embryology that had been ignored as molecular biology ascended. Examples like spiral cleaving gastropods or lecithotrophic squid embryos that develop from a blastodisk. These and others like them were detailed in early editions of Gene Activity in Early Development as Eric tried to synthesize a broad view of mechanistic developmental biology. Now 30 years later I still find myself in the Davidson Laboratory. Many milestones have filled that space. A more complete cell lineage scheme for the purple sea urchin, the first operationally complete gene regulatory network and the sea urchin genome project are a few that come to mind. Eric's unswerving focus, great intellect and enjoyment of science made these possible. But even now I wonder where the time went. It seemed to pass so quickly yet it was packed with extraordinary episodes. With Jane Rigg, Eric's long-term companion and administrator, I often marveled at how crazy the laboratory seemed. It was crazy with exciting science, quirky people and the strangeness of new ideas. With Eric gone it will never be the same.
R. Andrew Cameron California Institute of Technology, United States
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Developmental Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/developmentalbiology
Editorial
My time with Eric Davidson
I first encountered Eric Davidson in 1969 when, as a graduate student in the MBL Embryology Course, I heard him lecture. He spoke in general about the role of the nucleus in development. I now realize he organized his lecture on the basis of the introduction to his 1968 book, Gene Activity in Early Development and included some of the ideas published in his 1969 Science paper written with Roy Britten. That paper presented ideas that he built on throughout his career. In my naïve view, it seemed like Eric was belaboring an established tenet. Did not everyone accept that DNA in the nucleus was the genetic material and the blueprint for development? But it was not until much later in my education that I realized he was reacting to ongoing controversies occupying the last 16 years since the publication of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. To emphasize that controversy I remember that Lionel Jaffe, who studied the role of calcium waves in many kinds of biological processes including development, several times during the lecture refuted Eric's focus on the nucleus. I met Eric often over the ensuing summers at MBL since my major professor had leased a summer laboratory there. Eric taught in the Embryology Course and began to direct it in 1972. At this time, he re-organized the course. It was shortened to 6 weeks and ran about 12 h a day beginning with lectures at 10:00 a.m. and ending with laboratory periods in the evening. This was drastic change much discussed by the old-timers who had weathered leaking ceilings in the old wooden lab buildings. But the intensity was intentional. Eric believed that the excitement of the laboratory could compete with the vacation digressions of Cape Cod. His approach proved correct based on student responses and the several published reports that were largely executed during the course. However, trips to the Woods Hole bar, the Captain Kidd, continued to follow the evening sessions In 1984 while I was at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, I took advantage of an NSF program to train PIs in molecular biology and asked Eric if I could join his laboratory for 6 months to undertake that training. He answered affirmatively saying: “we could use a larval biologist”. Soon after I arrived in 1985, I presented a seminar to the Davidson laboratory group which numbered about 30 people then. I talked about early cell lineage and presented hypotheses to account for how embryonic cell lineages could contribute to adult structures in a creature with a long larval phase in which rudiments of the adult developed. Eric was
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2016.01.022 0012-1606/& 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
unusually rapt and afterward he invited me to his office for a discussion. In the following weeks we met a couple of times each week and loudly discussed the possible connections between embryonic and adult tissues through the little understood larval phase. It was loud and fun because little was known about later cell lineages and we could each try to convince the other of our poorly supported views. The discussions resulted in a lineage map published with Eric's third edition of Gene Activity in Early Development. They also served as the basis for cell lineage studies that occupied my time for the next few years. This process was so entertaining that I resigned my position at the University of Puerto Rico and joined the Davidson laboratory. In the late 1980's Eric again accepted the directorship of the Embryology Course. He invited me to present the laboratories on sea urchins and teach the students how to inject DNA or lineage tracer into embryos. I also conducted evening demonstration laboratories at Eric's urging. These were demonstrations of the classical systems of embryology that had been ignored as molecular biology ascended. Examples like spiral cleaving gastropods or lecithotrophic squid embryos that develop from a blastodisk. These and others like them were detailed in early editions of Gene Activity in Early Development as Eric tried to synthesize a broad view of mechanistic developmental biology. Now 30 years later I still find myself in the Davidson Laboratory. Many milestones have filled that space. A more complete cell lineage scheme for the purple sea urchin, the first operationally complete gene regulatory network and the sea urchin genome project are a few that come to mind. Eric's unswerving focus, great intellect and enjoyment of science made these possible. But even now I wonder where the time went. It seemed to pass so quickly yet it was packed with extraordinary episodes. With Jane Rigg, Eric's long-term companion and administrator, I often marveled at how crazy the laboratory seemed. It was crazy with exciting science, quirky people and the strangeness of new ideas. With Eric gone it will never be the same.
R. Andrew Cameron California Institute of Technology, United States