Paul M. Bingham
Encyclopedia
Paul Montgomery Bingham is an American molecular biologist and evolutionary biologist, Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University. He is known for his work in molecular biology, and has also published recent articles and a book on human evolution.
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
in 1980 (thesis advisor, Matthew Meselson
) after completing an MS in Microbiology at the University of Illinois (with John W. Drake
). He spent two years at the NIEHS before joining the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in 1982.
sequence element, the P element transposon This enabled a widely used strategy still used today for retrieving genes from animals. It also shed fundamental new light on how evolution
shapes the (self-interested) individual genes that collaborate to build organism
s.
With his wife, Zuzana Zachar. he demonstrated that transposon
insertion mutations were responsible for most of the alleles used in the development of classical genetics
.
(Zachar and Bingham, 1982). He also collaborated with Carl Wu and Sarah Elgin
(then at Harvard) on fundamental properties of metazoan chromatin structure (Wu, et al., 1979).
In collaboration with Margaret Kidwell, then at Brown University, and Gerry Rubin, then at the Carnegie Institution), he carried out the molecular cloning of the P element transposon in Drosophila
(Bingham, et al., 1982). This work revolutionized the retrieval of genes in Drosophila and subsequently contributed to progress in metazoan molecular and developmental genetics. He and his collaborators were the first to propose the use of P element "transposon tagging" to clone the first metazoan RNA
polymerase subunit (Searles et al., 1982). This work demonstrated that the P element is a recently invading parasite of the Drosophila genome and gene pool. Thus, P became the first clearly defined metazoan example of this long-suspected phenomenon.
His research group also worked on the nature of metazoan gene regulation (Zachar and Bingham, 1985) and the elucidation of the first case of autoregulation of gene expression at the level of pre-mRNA splicing (Chou, et al., 1987; Zachar, et al., 1987; Bingham, et al., 1988; Spikes et al., 1994) and of critical features of the nuclear organization of pre-mRNA processing and transport (Li and Bingham, 1991; Zachar, et al., 1994). This latter work first clearly established the now-widely accepted model of channeled diffusion for the movement of most pre-mRNAs through the nuclear compartment (reviewed in Kramer, et al., 1994).
, Evolutionary Anthropology
and the Journal of Theoretical Biology
. (Bingham, 1999 and 2000; Okada and Bingham, 2008).
He and co-author Joanne Souza have developed the theory further in a self-published book, Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe (BookSurge, 2009). This work builds on W.D. Hamilton’s theory of kin selection
(Benefit x Relatedness > Cost) and posits that the Homo genus evolved when an ancestral organism developed the ability to effectively manage non-kin conflicts of interests by lowering the cost of coercion between non-kin individuals (Benefit > Cost of Coercion + Cost of Cooperation).
The theory, using precedents established in biological theory, proposes to explain many aspects of human social and sexual behavior. It proposed to account for the evolution
of the human species from the advent of its phylogenetic branching from other hominids through physiological and behavioral adaptations until our current civilization. This theory of human uniqueness claims to answer the fundamental scientific challenge posted by Charles Darwin
, to explain the descent of man: how did the 'incremental' process of evolution by natural selection suddenly produce an utterly unprecedented kind of animal, humans? It suggests an explanation of human origins
, and also of human properties (from speech to political/economic/religious behavior).
According to his theory, the cost of coercing a cheating individual in a cooperative effort, otherwise known as the free-rider problem, was lowered when a precursor species to modern humans developed a way to threaten adult con-specifics from a distance by evolving the ability to throw. This diffused the risk to the predator formulated by Lanchester's Square Law. It proposes that we evolved the ability to repel predators and scavenge their kills in the African savannah. This was later adapted as threat projection towards free-riding con-specifics in non kin cooperative groups.
The theory further generalizes to a theory of history, claiming to account for many salient events of the 2 million year course of the human lineage – from the evolution of the Homo genus to the inception of behavioral modernity
to the neolithic revolution
to the rise of the nation-state
(Bingham, 1999 and 2000).
He has presented his theory at The Stony Brook Human Evolution Symposium and Workshop, convened by Richard Leakey
http://stonybrook.edu/sb/humanevolution/people2005.shtml. Most recently, Bingham joined Noam Chomsky
, Marc Hauser
, Ray Jackendoff
, Philip Lieberman
, Ian Tattersall
and others to debate the issues surrounding the evolution of human speech at the Morris Symposium on language evolution http://www.linguistics.stonybrook.edu/events/nyct05/index_files/Page336.htm. He and Souza presented their work on theories of human evolution, behavior and history at the 2009 meeting of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology.
Bingham serves as the Faculty Director of the Freshmen College of Human Development at Stony Brook http://www.sunysb.edu/ucolleges/hdv/humanabout.shtml.
Bingham also serves on the management team of Cornerstone Pharmaceuticals, a firm developing cancer therapies, as Vice President of Research. He and his collaborator Prof. Zuzana Zachar recently received the Maffetone Research Prize from the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund for their cancer work.
Biography
Bingham received his undergraduate degree at Blackburn College in Carlinville Illinois, and then completed his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
in 1980 (thesis advisor, Matthew Meselson
Matthew Meselson
Matthew Stanley Meselson is an American geneticist and molecular biologist whose research was important in showing how DNA replicates, recombines and is repaired in cells. In his mature years, he has been an active chemical and biological weapons activist and consultant...
) after completing an MS in Microbiology at the University of Illinois (with John W. Drake
John W. Drake
-References:...
). He spent two years at the NIEHS before joining the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in 1982.
Molecular biology
He was part of a collaborative team that discovered of the parasitic DNADNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
sequence element, the P element transposon This enabled a widely used strategy still used today for retrieving genes from animals. It also shed fundamental new light on how evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
shapes the (self-interested) individual genes that collaborate to build organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
s.
With his wife, Zuzana Zachar. he demonstrated that transposon
Transposon
Transposable elements are sequences of DNA that can move or transpose themselves to new positions within the genome of a single cell. The mechanism of transposition can be either "copy and paste" or "cut and paste". Transposition can create phenotypically significant mutations and alter the cell's...
insertion mutations were responsible for most of the alleles used in the development of classical genetics
Classical genetics
Classical genetics consists of the technique and methodologies of genetics that predate the advent of molecular biology. A key discovery of classical genetics in eukaryotes was genetic linkage...
.
(Zachar and Bingham, 1982). He also collaborated with Carl Wu and Sarah Elgin
Sarah Elgin
Sarah C.R. Elgin is an American biologist noted for her work in epigenetics, gene regulation, and heterochromatin and her contributions to science education....
(then at Harvard) on fundamental properties of metazoan chromatin structure (Wu, et al., 1979).
In collaboration with Margaret Kidwell, then at Brown University, and Gerry Rubin, then at the Carnegie Institution), he carried out the molecular cloning of the P element transposon in Drosophila
Drosophila
Drosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies" or more appropriately pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit...
(Bingham, et al., 1982). This work revolutionized the retrieval of genes in Drosophila and subsequently contributed to progress in metazoan molecular and developmental genetics. He and his collaborators were the first to propose the use of P element "transposon tagging" to clone the first metazoan RNA
RNA
Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....
polymerase subunit (Searles et al., 1982). This work demonstrated that the P element is a recently invading parasite of the Drosophila genome and gene pool. Thus, P became the first clearly defined metazoan example of this long-suspected phenomenon.
His research group also worked on the nature of metazoan gene regulation (Zachar and Bingham, 1985) and the elucidation of the first case of autoregulation of gene expression at the level of pre-mRNA splicing (Chou, et al., 1987; Zachar, et al., 1987; Bingham, et al., 1988; Spikes et al., 1994) and of critical features of the nuclear organization of pre-mRNA processing and transport (Li and Bingham, 1991; Zachar, et al., 1994). This latter work first clearly established the now-widely accepted model of channeled diffusion for the movement of most pre-mRNAs through the nuclear compartment (reviewed in Kramer, et al., 1994).
Human evolutionary biology
In the mid-1990s, he developed a theory of human uniqueness that proposes a novel explanation of why humans have evolved to be ecologically dominant. The theory has been published in three peer-reviewed journals: The Quarterly Review of BiologyThe Quarterly Review of Biology
The Quarterly Review of Biology or QRB is a scientific review of current and historical topics in biology as well as a source of book reviews. It was begun in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s, the Review was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass became...
, Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science...
and the Journal of Theoretical Biology
Journal of Theoretical Biology
The Journal of Theoretical Biology is a scientific journal about theoretical biology; dealing with theoretical issues, as well as mathematical and computational aspects of biology. Some research areas covered by the papers published in the journal are population genetics, morphogenesis,...
. (Bingham, 1999 and 2000; Okada and Bingham, 2008).
He and co-author Joanne Souza have developed the theory further in a self-published book, Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe (BookSurge, 2009). This work builds on W.D. Hamilton’s theory of kin selection
Kin selection
Kin selection refers to apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Charles Darwin was the first to discuss the concept of group/kin selection...
(Benefit x Relatedness > Cost) and posits that the Homo genus evolved when an ancestral organism developed the ability to effectively manage non-kin conflicts of interests by lowering the cost of coercion between non-kin individuals (Benefit > Cost of Coercion + Cost of Cooperation).
The theory, using precedents established in biological theory, proposes to explain many aspects of human social and sexual behavior. It proposed to account for the evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
of the human species from the advent of its phylogenetic branching from other hominids through physiological and behavioral adaptations until our current civilization. This theory of human uniqueness claims to answer the fundamental scientific challenge posted by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, to explain the descent of man: how did the 'incremental' process of evolution by natural selection suddenly produce an utterly unprecedented kind of animal, humans? It suggests an explanation of human origins
Human evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
, and also of human properties (from speech to political/economic/religious behavior).
According to his theory, the cost of coercing a cheating individual in a cooperative effort, otherwise known as the free-rider problem, was lowered when a precursor species to modern humans developed a way to threaten adult con-specifics from a distance by evolving the ability to throw. This diffused the risk to the predator formulated by Lanchester's Square Law. It proposes that we evolved the ability to repel predators and scavenge their kills in the African savannah. This was later adapted as threat projection towards free-riding con-specifics in non kin cooperative groups.
The theory further generalizes to a theory of history, claiming to account for many salient events of the 2 million year course of the human lineage – from the evolution of the Homo genus to the inception of behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a...
to the neolithic revolution
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution. It was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in 6 separate locations worldwide circa...
to the rise of the nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
(Bingham, 1999 and 2000).
He has presented his theory at The Stony Brook Human Evolution Symposium and Workshop, convened by Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey is a politician, paleoanthropologist and conservationist. He is second of the three sons of the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, and is the younger brother of Colin Leakey...
http://stonybrook.edu/sb/humanevolution/people2005.shtml. Most recently, Bingham joined Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Marc Hauser
Marc Hauser
Marc D. Hauser is an American evolutionary biologist and a researcher in primate behavior and animal cognition who taught in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. In August 2010, a committee of Harvard faculty found Hauser solely responsible for eight counts of unspecified scientific...
, Ray Jackendoff
Ray Jackendoff
Ray Jackendoff is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University...
, Philip Lieberman
Philip Lieberman
Philip Lieberman is a linguist at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Originally trained in phonetics, he wrote a dissertation on intonation. The remainder of his career has focused on topics in the evolution of language, and particularly the relationship between the...
, Ian Tattersall
Ian Tattersall
Ian Tattersall is a paleoanthropologist and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Tattersall received his PhD from Yale University in 1971. In addition to human evolution, he has worked extensively with lemurs. He is working with The Templeton Foundation.-Selected publications:* The...
and others to debate the issues surrounding the evolution of human speech at the Morris Symposium on language evolution http://www.linguistics.stonybrook.edu/events/nyct05/index_files/Page336.htm. He and Souza presented their work on theories of human evolution, behavior and history at the 2009 meeting of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology.
Academic work
In collaboration with Joanne Souza, he has developed a course http://moya.ic.sunysb.edu/Class/bio358/instructors.htm on the logic and implications of this new theory http://www.stonybrook.edu/ugadmissions/programs/Paul_Bingham.shtml.Bingham serves as the Faculty Director of the Freshmen College of Human Development at Stony Brook http://www.sunysb.edu/ucolleges/hdv/humanabout.shtml.
Bingham also serves on the management team of Cornerstone Pharmaceuticals, a firm developing cancer therapies, as Vice President of Research. He and his collaborator Prof. Zuzana Zachar recently received the Maffetone Research Prize from the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund for their cancer work.
External links
- Official page at Stony Brook University
- Interview with Bingham on "New Books in History"