Ford Doolittle

W. Ford Doolittle FRSC FRS (born February 21, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois)[1] is an evolutionary and molecular biologist. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[2] He is also the winner of the 2013 Herzberg Medal of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada[3] and the 2017 Killam Prize.[4]

Ford Doolittle
Doolittle at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in 2016
Born
W. Ford Doolittle

(1942-02-21) February 21, 1942
Urbana, Illinois, U.S.
EducationHarvard University (BA 1963), Stanford University (PhD 1967), NSCAD University, Nova Scotia (BA in photography)
Known forHorizontal gene transfer in prokaryotic evolution
AwardsNational Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada
Scientific career
FieldsCyanobacteria, chloroplasts
InstitutionsDalhousie University
Doctoral advisorCharles Yanofsky

Doolittle has made significant contributions to the study of cyanobacteria. He found evidence for the endosymbiont origins of chloroplasts, and developed a theoretical basis for the initial evolution of eukaryotes. He has shown the importance of horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotic evolution.

As of 2007, he has been professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.[5] He received his BA in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1963 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1967, under Charles Yanofsky. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships with Sol Spiegelman and Norman R. Pace.

In 1981, Doolittle received some level of notoriety for his article in The CoEvolution Quarterly entitled "Is Nature Really Motherly?". This was a sharp rebuttal of J. E. Lovelock's formulation of the Gaia Theory. Doolittle's article is often cited by Lovelock's critics.

Because of his philosophical musings on the non-existence of an all-encompassing Tree of life, Doolittle has occasionally been cited on Intelligent Design blogs. However, though Doolittle argues that a bifurcating tree is not an adequate metaphor for the evolution of life on earth, he is not a supporter of Intelligent Design. A single common ancestor and tree relating all of life on earth is not a necessary component of the theory of descent with modification, the essence of evolution.

Doolittle is currently involved in a debate about the proper use of function (biology) within evolutionary biology sparked by controversy over the results of the ENCODE consortium stating that 80% of the genome is "functional".[6] He is a supporter of the concept of junk DNA.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023.[7]

In addition to his contributions to evolutionary biology, Doolittle is an artist who studied at NSCAD University, achieving a BA in photography.

Awards and honors

Selected publications
  • W. Ford Doolittle (2004). "W. Ford Doolittle". Curr. Biol. 14 (5): R176–R177. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.02.010. PMID 15028226. S2CID 41295582.
  • Brown, James R.; Doolittle, W. Ford (1997). "Archaea and the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition". Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. 61 (4): 456–502. doi:10.1128/mmbr.61.4.456-502.1997. PMC 232621. PMID 9409149.
  • Doolittle, W. Ford (1999). "Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal Tree". Science. 284 (5423): 2124–2129. doi:10.1126/science.284.5423.2124. PMID 10381871.
  • Baldauf, S. L.; Roger, A. J.; Wenk-Siefert, I.; Doolittle, W. Ford (2000). "A Kingdom-Level Phylogeny of Eukaryotes Based on Combined Protein Data". Science. 290 (5493): 972–977. Bibcode:2000Sci...290..972B. doi:10.1126/science.290.5493.972. PMID 11062127.

References
  1. Owens, Brian (April 11, 2014). "W. Ford Doolittle". science.ca. GCS Research Society. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  2. "Gruppe 6: Cellebiologi og molekylærbiologi" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
  3. "Government of Canada Announces Top Award Winners in Natural Sciences and Engineering Research". 28 June 2016.
  4. "Killam Prizes: 2017 Winners". Killam Program. Canada Council for the Arts. Retrieved 9 June 2017.
  5. "W. Ford Doolittle". Archived from the original on 17 May 2008. Retrieved 27 June 2008.
  6. Doolittle, W. Ford (7 March 2013). "Is junk DNA bunk? A critique of ENCODE". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 110 (14): 5294–5300. Bibcode:2013PNAS..110.5294D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1221376110. PMC 3619371. PMID 23479647.
  7. "W. Ford Doolittle". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2023-05-26.
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