4 ms·
How a guy from Montana overturned 150 years of biology
- gordaco 9y agoTLDR: lichens are not a symbiosis between a fungus and an alga; they are a symbioses between two fungi and an alga. It's a very nice article that explains how this was discovered. If you like biology, read the article; you'll like it.
- protomyth 9y agoThe thread from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199
- tasty_freeze 9y agoThe HN title is consistent with the Atlantic title, but the Atlantic title is clickbait. He didn't overturn 150 years of biology. He found that one little corner of the vastness which is biology was somewhat wrong -- lichen are symbiosis of two fungi and an algae, instead of just one fungus and an algae. Good for him, and he has an interesting backstory, but sheesh.
- thisisdave 9y agoYeah, "150 years of lichen biology" would be much better.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hyperion2010 9y agoMy favorite part of this story is how incredibly strong biases are toward existing hypotheses. "Lichenologists all thought that the fungi in the partnership belonged to a group called the ascomycetes—so Spribille had only searched for ascomycete genes. Almost on a whim, he broadened his search to the entire fungal kingdom, and found something bizarre." Sometimes we need to just throw our hypotheses out the window and look at all the data our tools can give us, especially now that sequencing is so cheap.
- GeekyBear 9y agoHere's another story that demonstrates the bias towards an existing hypotheses, featuring a newly minted recipient of the Nobel prize whose work was ridiculed by his peers and by a rather famous recipient of multiple Nobel prizes. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry-idUSTRE7941EP20111005 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry-idUSTRE794...
- dboreham 9y agoI think Montana should be capitalized, no? Proper noun, right? Possibly Biology too, but I'm an engineer so English not my strong suit..
- bshimmin 9y agoMontana yes, biology no.
- cwbrandsma 9y agoHate the writing of the article. Hallmark of a lazy writer is one that starts with "if you had told <insert name> ... would have laughed". Probably grew up in one of the Hutterite communities in Montana (since he spoke a form of German). Other than that, nice discovery.