By Patrick Sherry
Dr. James Cahill, lecturer and independent principal investigator (PI) for the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment researches the genetics of endangered species as the world experiences large global environmental change. These studies are efforts to better understand how species have evolved and how their adaptations allow them to survive in particular environmental systems.
Largely researching polar bears (including bear species related to polar bears), songbirds, and to some extent, wolves, the emphasis is inquiring about evolutionary genetics, population genetics, and conservation genetics. His work on natural selection research focuses on looking at the signatures of positive selection – natural selection acting to create new beneficial adaptations in the genome. This gives insight into how natural selection led to the development of new traits, the biology that underlines traits, and how life works. Not only that, with the similarities between the mammals across different species, this type of research may also provide insights into human health mechanisms.
With significant changes in the environment occurring around the world, Dr. Cahill believes this not only creates a sense of urgency to understand endangered species but also how environmental systems function.
“Natural selection has developed these incredible traits [and] adaptations,” said Cahill. “I think it’s a really and potentially historically understudied means for finding out about how systems work in nature – what is really important to make some sort of change.”
To inquire about this, genome alignments are used to demonstrate the differences between species at a genetic level and where natural selection was acting by looking at how patterns of genetic mutations differ between species.
This is likely most apparent in his research on polar bears. Polar bears entered the Arctic about 500,000 years ago, making them a relatively young species. Dr. Cahill is currently investigating how this species diverged from its ancestors and developed traits to adapt to these changes.
Other projects of Dr. Cahill’s include participating in the Gazelle Preservation Project and being a part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project, which is working toward producing high-quality genomes for one vertebrate every 50 million years of evolutionary divergence. Another project of his is looking at a variety of species, such as songbirds, that have evolved the ability to mimic sounds. This is exploring what can be learned from this to provide insight into humans’ novel evolutionary trait of not only being able to understand language but also the ability to speak it.
With all this extensive research, Dr. Cahill finds his field interesting because he believes that humans have a moral obligation to protect the environment.
“I think fundamentally there is a moral imperative for humans to do what we can to mitigate the environmental damage that we caused and to try and preserve as much of the biodiversity of Earth that we can,” said Cahill.
But overall, with advances in technology allowing scientists to learn more about the world than ever before, Dr. Cahill wants the newest generation of prospective scientists to do something they enjoy as he does.
“Do something fun; do something that you really care about,” said Cahill. “I got into this field because as a kid, I was excited and fascinated by animals. I’m glad that I got to keep that; I’m glad that I got to keep working with exciting animals.”