Dr. Johann Peter Gogarten is a German-American biologist studying the early evolution of life. Born in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany, he studied plant phys-iology and membrane transport at the Universities of Tübingen and Giessen. In 1987 he moved to the US as a postdoc to work at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He currently is Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT. Gogarten was the first person to root the Tree of life (biology) using an ancient gene duplication. Gogarten’s current focus is the evolution of homing endonuclease utilizing parasitic genetic elements (inteins) and the intertwining of selection occurring on the gene, population and the community level. His interests are the early evolution of life, horizontal gene transfer and selfish genetic elements. Research in the Gogarten Lab at UCONN has been funded through the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Israel-US Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Exobiology program. He is best known for rooting the tree of life and for his early recognition of horizontal gene transfer as an im-portant force in microbial evolution. Currently, a focus of his research is comparative genomics and horizontal gene transfer. He is also interested in the evolution of molecular parasites.
J. Peter Gogarten is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, a member of the CT Academy of Science and Engineering, and was selected as a recipient of a 2009 Fulbright scholarship.
This event is sponsored by Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County (HFFC).