Surviving as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment

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Abstract

I believe the evidence will show that the science we conduct and discoveries we make are influenced by our cultural experience, whether they be positive, negative, or neutral. I grew up as a person of color in the United States of America, faced with challenges that many had as members of an underrepresented minority group. I write here about some of the lessons I have learned that have allowed me to survive as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment.

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Learned birdsong and the neurobiology of human language.

Erich D. Jarvis (2004)

Vocal learning, the substrate for human language, is a rare trait found to date in only three distantly related groups of mammals (humans, bats, and cetaceans) and three distantly related groups of birds (parrots, hummingbirds, and songbirds). Brain pathways for vocal learning have been studied in the three bird groups and in humans. Here I present a hypothesis on the relationships and evolution of brain pathways for vocal learning among birds and humans. The three vocal learning bird groups each appear to have seven similar but not identical cerebral vocal nuclei distributed into two vocal pathways, one posterior and one anterior. Humans also appear to have a posterior vocal pathway, which includes projections from the face motor cortex to brainstem vocal lower motor neurons, and an anterior vocal pathway, which includes a strip of premotor cortex, the anterior basal ganglia, and the anterior thalamus. These vocal pathways are not found in vocal non-learning birds or mammals, but are similar to brain pathways used for other types of learning. Thus, I argue that if vocal learning evolved independently among birds and humans, then it did so under strong genetic constraints of a pre-existing basic neural network of the vertebrate brain.

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Core and region-enriched networks of behaviorally regulated genes and the singing genome.

Osceola Whitney, Andreas Pfenning, Jason Howard … (2014)

Songbirds represent an important model organism for elucidating molecular mechanisms that link genes with complex behaviors, in part because they have discrete vocal learning circuits that have parallels with those that mediate human speech. We found that ~10% of the genes in the avian genome were regulated by singing, and we found a striking regional diversity of both basal and singing-induced programs in the four key song nuclei of the zebra finch, a vocal learning songbird. The region-enriched patterns were a result of distinct combinations of region-enriched transcription factors (TFs), their binding motifs, and presinging acetylation of histone 3 at lysine 27 (H3K27ac) enhancer activity in the regulatory regions of the associated genes. RNA interference manipulations validated the role of the calcium-response transcription factor (CaRF) in regulating genes preferentially expressed in specific song nuclei in response to singing. Thus, differential combinatorial binding of a small group of activity-regulated TFs and predefined epigenetic enhancer activity influences the anatomical diversity of behaviorally regulated gene networks.

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Avian genomes. A flock of genomes. Introduction.

Guojie Zhang, Erich D. Jarvis, M Gilbert (2014)

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David G. Drubin: Role: Monitoring Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Mol Biol Cell

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Mol. Biol. Cell

Journal ID (hwp): molbiolcell

Journal ID (pmc): mbc

Journal ID (publisher-id): Mol. Bio. Cell

Title: Molecular Biology of the Cell

Publisher: The American Society for Cell Biology

ISSN (Print): 1059-1524

ISSN (Electronic): 1939-4586

Publication date (Print): 01 November 2015

Volume: 26

Issue: 21

Pages: 3692-3696

Affiliations

[1]Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, MD 20815

University of California, Berkeley

Author notes

Erich D. Jarvis is the 2015 recipient of the E. E. Just Award from the American Society for Cell Biology.

¹Address correspondence to: Erich D. Jarvis ( jarvis@ 123456neuro.duke.edu )

Article

Publisher ID: E15-06-0451

DOI: 10.1091/mbc.E15-06-0451

PMC ID: 4626054

PubMed ID: 26515973

SO-VID: 6e8bdd59-8f20-4bbd-a0c8-ddb12d40b481

Copyright © © 2015 Jarvis. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). Two months after publication it is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

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“ASCB®,” “The American Society for Cell Biology®,” and “Molecular Biology of the Cell®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology.

Surviving as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment

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Genome Engineering using CRISPR

Most cited references 12

Learned birdsong and the neurobiology of human language.

Core and region-enriched networks of behaviorally regulated genes and the singing genome.

Avian genomes. A flock of genomes. Introduction.

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