With our March speaker, Ben Hall, the VRS will become seriously scientific.  Ben is a Professor of Botany (as well as of Genome Sciences) at the University of Washington in Seattle.  Faculty information on him begins:  ‘Dr. Hall received his PhD in biophysical chemistry at Harvard. His thesis research . . . involved discovery and characterization of the two large ribobomal RNAs, which he named 18S and 28S.  From 1958-63, he was a Chemistry faculty member at the University of Illinois. His research there demonstrated sequence complementarity [sic] between a newly discovered class of RNA molecules (mRNA) and genomic DNA. Dr. Hall joined the UW faculty in 1963’.  VRS members should not be put off by all this, however, (though it gets much worse), because I know Ben as a most pleasant man who is accessibly articulate, and his garden in Bellevue, Washington, is extremely beautiful.

‘Rhododendron Evolution and Biogeography’ is a subject indicated as one of Ben’s current research interests.  ‘The nearly 1000 species in the genus Rhododendron are remarkable’, the summary continues, ‘for their wide range of size . . . , of flower types and for where they occur.’ And, following a list of places for naturally occurring rhododendron species: ‘For most of these groups, a few species are dispersed to other continents, far from the center of diversity. By carrying out systematic studies on the DNA of Rhododendron species, our goal is to discover how and when vicariance [sic] and dispersal events occurred that led to the current geographical species distribution. Of particular interest are the historical geologic and climactic factors leading to the radiation of 300 species of Vireya Rhododendrons in and near the islands of Malesia.’

Ben has been Chairman of the Research Committee of the ARS, and is on the Executive Committee of the Rhododendron Species Foundation, as well as being a member of the Botanical Society of America, the Genetics Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists.  He has had a year in Munich, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar, has been awarded the highly prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for work in Cambridge, England, occupies the endowed Chair of Washington Research Foundation Professor of Botany and Genetics, and was ‘Inventor of the Year’ at the University of Washington School of Medicine.  He has worked in a collaborative programme with high school students involved with, among other things, cancer research and field and laboratory research on the phylogeography of Rhododendron macrophyllum, and has participated in an exchange programme for students at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.

The title of Ben's talk to the VRS on the evening of March 16 is "So many Rhododendron Species- How they Came to Be and How they Moved About", a title which suggests both interest and accessibility for all of us.  It will be a privilege to have Ben Hall at the VRS.

Appendix

For those VRS members more imbued with science than most of us, Ben’s other ‘current research interest’ is as follows:

Molecular Evolution of RNA Polymerase: We view RNA Polymerase evolution through the prism of the gene families that encode the two largest subunits of RNA polymerase.The eukaryotic nuclear genome contains three different members of each of these families, encoding the two largest subunits of RNA Polymerases I, II, and III. In fungi, each of these six genes exists as a single copy in the haploid genome. Their large size and slow rate of evolution makes the RNA Polymerase structural genes very well-suited for ascertaining phylogeny. Our work on molecular systematics of fungi has utilized RPB1 and RPB2, encoding subunits 1 and 2 of RNA Polymerase II. For green plants the evolution of nuclear genes encoding subunits of these two gene families has additional dimensions, due to complex gene structures (>20 introns in several genes) and changes in gene number occurring at several junctures in dicot evolution. Research is ongoing with plant genes encoding other RNA Polymerase subunits. Because the subunits for different polymerases evolve at different rates, the set of six genes provides a well-balanced toolkit for ascertaining phylogeny at different levels.