Sean B. Carroll
Carroll in 2022
Born (1960-09-17) September 17, 1960
Toledo, Ohio, US
Alma materWashington University in St. Louis (BS)
Tufts University (PhD)
AwardsPresidential Young Investigator Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science
Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution
Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers
Shaw Scientist Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation
Scientific career
FieldsEvolutionary developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics
InstitutionsUniversity of Maryland, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Colorado at Boulder
Doctoral advisorB. David Stollar
Other academic advisorsMatthew P. Scott

Sean B. Carroll (born September 17, 1960) is an American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and professor emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His studies focus on the evolution of cis-regulatory elements in the regulation of gene expression in the context of biological development, using Drosophila as a model system. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, of the American Philosophical Society (2007), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for Advancement of Science. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Carroll has received the Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Lewis Thomas Prize at Rockefeller University. Awards-winning films he has produced include Emmy-winning The Farthest and The Serengeti Rules, as well as the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes.

Biography

Sean B. Carroll was born in Toledo, Ohio. He is of Irish ancestry.[1] He has stated that, as a child, he would flip over rocks looking for snakes while attending Maumee Valley Country Day School, and at age 11 or 12, he started keeping snakes. This activity led him to notice the patterns on the snakes and wonder how those form. He got his B.A. in Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, his Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University and did post-doctoral work at the University of Colorado Boulder.[2]

Career

Carroll is at the forefront of evolutionary developmental biology (also called "evo-devo"), studying how gene changes control the evolution of body parts and patterns. He is the Allan Wilson Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.[3] In 1987, Carroll set up a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison "focused on understanding how genes get used in different ways to generate the diversity of form that we see".[2] The Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology lists Carroll's interests as "Genetic control of body pattern in fruit flies, butterflies, and other animals".[4] Carroll's team has shown, in a series of papers, how the activation of genes during the embryonic stages of the Drosophila fruit fly controls the development of its wings. The team has been searching for the butterfly's counterparts of these genes.[5]

In 2010, he was named vice-president for science education of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.[6] In 2011, the HHMI launched a documentary film initiative to produce science features for television, to which Carroll was appointed as one of the executive producers.[7] In 2012, Carroll founded HHMI Tangled Bank Studios.[8] In 2012, a film produced by this studio called The Day the Mesozoic Died retraced the investigation that led to the discovery of the asteroid collision that triggered the mass extinction at the end of that Era. The film was introduced by Carroll at a National Teacher's Conference.[9]

Carroll was an executive producer[10] of The Farthest, a film about the Voyager program, which won the Emmy in 2018 for outstanding science and technology documentary.[11] Carroll was an executive producer of the 2022 Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes,[12] which won the best documentary award at the Cannes Film Festival.[13]

Carroll is a proponent of the extended evolutionary synthesis.[14] Since 2013, Carroll has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.[15] From September 2009 to March 2013, he wrote a column for The New York Times called "Remarkable Creatures", where he discussed findings in animal evolution.[16][17]

Awards

In 2012, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science from the Franklin Institute "for proposing and demonstrating that the diversity and multiplicity of animal life is largely due to the different ways that the same genes are regulated rather than to mutation of the genes themselves."[2] In 2016, he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize at Rockefeller University.[18]

Selected works

Books

  • From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design, with Jennifer Grenier and Scott Weatherbee (2004, Wiley-Blackwell; ISBN 978-1-4051-1950-4)
  • Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom (2005, W. W. Norton & Company; ISBN 978-0-393-06016-4)
  • The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (2006, W. W. Norton & Company; ISBN 978-0-393-06163-5)
  • Into the Jungle: Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution (2008, Benjamin Cummings; ISBN 978-0-321-55671-4)
  • Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species (2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; ISBN 978-0-15-101485-9)
  • Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize (2013, Crown; ISBN 978-0-307-95233-2)
  • The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters (2016, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-16742-8)
  • A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You (2020), Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-20175-7.

Magazine articles

  • The Origins of Form: Ancient genes, recycled and re-purposed, control embryonic development in organisms of striking diversity (2005, Natural History Magazine) [19]
  • God as Genetic Engineer. A review of Michael Behe's book "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism" (2007, Science Magazine) [20]
  • Regulating Evolution: How Gene Switches Make Life (2008, Scientific American) [21]

Filmography

Year Title Note Ref.
2017The FarthestEmmy award, Outstanding science and technology documentary[10][11]
2018The Serengeti Rules Emmy award, Best nature documentary[22][23]
2019Oliver Sacks: His Own Life[24]
2022All That Breathes[13][25]

Reception

Science writer Peter Forbes, writing in The Guardian, calls Endless Forms Most Beautiful an "essential book" and its author "both a distinguished scientist ... and one of our great science writers." In Forbes's view, in The Serengeti Rules Carroll "manages to unite natural history with the hard science of genomics."[26] In her article on Science Based Medicine titled The Essential Role of Regulation In Human Health and In Ecology: The Serengeti Rules, Harriet A. Hall says "This book is a great way to learn about the rules of regulation and about how science works. It's not just a painless way to learn, its positively fun."[27] The documentary film, The Serengeti Rules, was released in 2018 and is based on Carroll's book.[28]

Louise S. Mead, reviewing The Making of the Fittest for the National Center for Science Education, notes that Carroll describes "some of the overwhelming evidence for evolution provided in DNA", using different lines of inquiry such as DNA sequences that code for genes no longer in use, and evidence of evolutionary change. Mead notes that evolutionary theory has predictive power, as with icefish whose ancestors had hemoglobin; as they no longer need it in their icy environment, they have lost it.[29]

Douglas H. Erwin, reviewing Endless Forms Most Beautiful for Artificial Life, remarks that life forms from Drosophila to man have far fewer genes than many biologists expected – in man's case, only some 20,000, which is about the same as a fly. He notes the "astonishing morphological diversity" of animals coming from "such a limited number of genes". He praises Carroll's "insightful and enthusiastic" style, writing in a "witty and engaging" way, pulling the reader into the complexities of Hox and PAX-6, as well as celebrating the Cambrian explosion of life forms, and much else.[30]

References

  1. ↑ "117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution – Sean Carroll". www.preposterousuniverse.com. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science". Franklin Institute. 2012. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Our Scientists". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved August 11, 2017.
  4. ↑ "LCMB Investigators". Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology at UW-Madison. Archived from the original on May 15, 2020. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  5. ↑ Wade, Nicholas (July 5, 1994). "How Nature Makes a Butterfly's Wing". The New York Times. p. C9. Archived from the original on April 5, 2019. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
  6. ↑ "Sean B. Carroll, HHMI Vice President for Science Education". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  7. ↑ "HHMI Launches Documentary Film Unit to Create Science Features for Television". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  8. ↑ Walsh, Barry (December 10, 2020). "HHMI Tangled Bank Studios' Sean Carroll talks new vaccine doc, taking on denialism". Realscreen.
  9. ↑ "HHMI Premieres New Film Showcasing One of Science's Greatest Detective Stories". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  10. 1 2 McNary, Dave (August 2, 2017). "Voyager Mission Documentary 'The Farthest' Lands August Release". Variety. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  11. 1 2 Falvey, Deirdre (October 2, 2018). "Irish film 'The Farthest' wins Emmy for outstanding science documentary". The Irish Times. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  12. ↑ Cho, Aimee (March 2, 2023). "UMD Professor Up for Best Documentary Academy Award". NBC 4. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  13. 1 2 French, Kristen (December 20, 2022). "The Human Story at the Heart of Science". Nautilus. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  14. ↑ Carroll, Sean B. (2008). "Evo-Devo and an Expanding Evolutionary Synthesis: A Genetic Theory of Morphological Evolution". Cell. 134 (1): 25–36. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.030. PMID 18614008. S2CID 2513041.
  15. ↑ "Advisory Council". ncse.com. National Center for Science Education. Archived from the original on August 10, 2013. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  16. ↑ Carroll, Sean B (September 15, 2009). "In a Shark's Tooth, a New Family Tree". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
  17. ↑ Carroll, Sean B. (March 11, 2013). "Solving the Puzzles of Mimicry in Nature". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
  18. ↑ "Presentation of the 2016 Lewis Thomas Prize to Sean B. Carroll". The Rockefeller University. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  19. ↑ Carroll, Sean B. "The Origins of Form". Natural History. Archived from the original on October 9, 2018. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  20. ↑ Carroll, Sean B. (June 8, 2007). "God as Genetic Engineer". Science Magazine. 316 (5830): 1427–1428. doi:10.1126/science.1145104.
  21. ↑ Sean B Carroll; Nicolas Gompel; Benjamin Prudhomme (May 2008). "Regulating Evolution: How Gene Switches Make Life". Scientific American. Archived from the original on July 12, 2017. Retrieved May 3, 2017. (Preview)
  22. ↑ Walsh, Barry (December 10, 2020). "HHMI Tangled Bank Studios' Sean Carroll talks new vaccine doc, taking on denialism". Realscreen. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  23. ↑ Defore, John (May 8, 2019). "'The Serengeti Rules': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  24. ↑ Gleiberman, Owen (October 1, 2019). "New York Film Review: 'Oliver Sacks: His Own Life'". Variety. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  25. ↑ Kroll, Justin (February 16, 2023). "'All That Breathes' Director Shaunak Sen Signs With WME And Entertainment 360". Deadline. Retrieved August 18, 2023.
  26. ↑ Forbes, Peter (March 23, 2016). "The Serengeti Rules by Sean B Carroll review – a visionary book about how life works". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  27. ↑ Hall, Harriet (March 2016). "The Essential Role of Regulation In Human Health and In Ecology: The Serengeti Rules". Science Based Medicine. Archived from the original on April 26, 2020. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  28. ↑ Regan, Chelsea (April 7, 2019). "PBS International & HHMI Tangled Bank Partner on Science Docs". TVREAL. Archived from the original on June 16, 2019. Retrieved April 23, 2019.
  29. ↑ Mead, Louise S. (2008). "Review: The Making of the Fittest". Reports of the National Center for Science Education. 28 (1): 37–39. Archived from the original on April 3, 2016. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  30. ↑ Erwin, Douglas J. (2007). "Book Review: Endless Forms Most Beautiful". Artificial Life. 13 (1): 87–89. doi:10.1162/artl.2007.13.1.87. S2CID 11493585.
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