by Julius Lukeš
Eugene Koonin during his talk at the Faculty of Science, Charles University.
The Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre (Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, CZ) and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, CZ) were hosting an interesting scientific trio consisting of Eugene Koonin (NIH, Bethesda, USA), Patrick Keeling (UBC, Canada) and Dave Speijer (University of Amsterdam, NL). During their stay, they gave several lectures, followed by entertaining and productive debates, and numerous discussions over good wine/beer.
The University of South Bohemia held an honorary doctorate ceremony for Patrick Keeling.
Patrick got a Dr. honoris causa from the University of South Bohemia, reflecting his impact on the Budějovice (Budweis) protistology community, where Aleš Horák, Elisabeth Hehenberger and Martin Kolísko, his former post-docs, now have their own labs. One of the highlights was the double lecture given by Patrick and Eugene, formally billed as ‘New perspectives on the origin of eukaryotes’, but sometimes more excitingly referred to as the ‘K-K battle about eukaryogenesis’. Patrick defended a slow complexification in the Asgard archaea allowing phagocytosis to develop and stressed that changing competitors into food was the important turning point. Eugene described the large contribution of the Asgard archaeal genomes to LECA which has been coming into focus. As these positions are not incompatible, the ‘battle’ remained subdued and the ensuing discussion was thus not exciting enough for my taste. I pressured Dave to enter the fray and he obliged by dutifully mounting his hobby horse: a symbiogenetic theory in which entry of the bacterial endosymbiont is crucial instead. Surprisingly, nobody had changed their minds in the least upon the more intense debate that followed.
Field trip – Protist observation, Ruda field station near Veselí nad Lužnicí. Faculty of Science, Charles University.
The visit was further enriched by a field trip, in frame of which mud and soil samples, as well as insects, and a few other invertebrate hosts were examined for protists, of which a cornucopia was observed under the microscopes at the field station of Charles University in Veselí nad Lužnicí. In the end, the trio of guests seemed to feel as pampered by their hosts as the protists they examined there (at least that is what one of them told me).
Patrick Keeling and Eugene Koonin.
